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Trans-Lunar Ambience

Blog posts June 2020

'Sacred Spaces' by Michael Whalen

'Sacred Spaces' the new album by Michael Whalen, now featuring on Moon Phase Radio.

 

 

“This new project describes my spiritual journey,” says two-time Emmy® award winner and Grammy®-nominated composer Michael Whalen about his new electronic ambient album Sacred Spaces.

“Over the past decade, I realized I am 100 percent responsible for whatever my relationship with a higher being might be. When I first had the idea to do an album about the search for a higher power, I was imagining an orchestral project — a symphony. There was a point where I ran out of gas, maybe because part of me didn’t really want an answer. A couple of years ago, I revisited some themes I’d written and thought that maybe I should do this as an electronic project.”

The result is Sacred Spaces, at once a tour de force of haunting melodies over percolating rhythms and a musical expression of Whalen’s personal reconciliation with a universal puzzle: The existence and nature of the divine.
“Sacred Spaces is the expression of something that is impossible to say,” he adds. “Music can go to a lot of places words can’t. This is that record.”

http://michaelwhalen.com

 

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'Wink of An Eye' by Joe Olnick

'Wink of An Eye' the new album by Joe Olnick, now featuring on Moon Phase Radio.

 

 

Guitarist & producer Joe Olnick explores new directions in modern instrumental music.  With seven albums of independently released original material, his work generally falls into two different genres:  rock/funk/jazz with his band as well as solo ambient.  Two singles he produced with his band hit the US college radio charts ("Funky Traffic" and "Downtown").

His solo ambient album, Wink of An Eye, was released worldwide on April 24, 2020.  Celebrating the 5-year anniversary of the "Ambient Class of 2015", when Joe Olnick released three ambient albums in a single year, Wink Of An Eye takes short sections from one of those albums (Bright Paintings) and completely transforms the pieces into space music that goes even deeper, utilizing advanced processing techniques only recently made available. Surprisingly, there are no keyboards or synthesizers anywhere, despite the synth-like soundscapes that this album creates. The original sources included Olnick on guitar, with Stew Bradley adding some subtle percussion.  Mastered by the legendary Robert Rich.

According to Olnick, "This was one of the most unique projects that I've ever worked on, and I'm very pleased with it.  Taking what had been a guitar-based rock/ambient hybrid and radically treating it to the point that it became something artistically unique on its own (as ambient space music) was unexpected, but the tools available to the modern musician are evolving.  I think it's important to relentlessly keep searching for new sounds, and new ways of working."

Previous ambient albums include Bright Paintings, Live At The Candy Factory, and Free Atmosphere.

https://joeolnick.com

https://www.facebook.com/JoeOlnickMusic

https://twitter.com/JoeOlnick

https://joeolnick.bandcamp.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/MississippiJoe1

 

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