NYC collective, VPC Ensemble present the track 'Soulwater', taken from their new album and now playing on M.P.R Ambient.
Release date: Aug 21, 2026
VPC Ensemble Guides Listeners on a Sonic Journey Through the Universe as “One Mind, Imagining Itself”
While watching a new life begin, Dash Lunde saw his own existence fold back on itself. The quiet vertigo of new parenthood serves as just one of many creative sparks for VPC Ensemble’s debut album, Life Is a Strange Loop. A response to Douglas Hofstadter’s theories of consciousness, the record is a slow-paced but high-energy ritual of human presence, creating an immersive, intentional sound journey through the universe: one mind, imagining itself. For VPC, consciousness is not an illusion of loops, but this self-referential looping consciousness is the nature of the entire universe.
VPC Ensemble is an exciting collective of New York improvisers that creates a textural sanctuary where ambient stillness meets jazz improvisation, led by Lunde’s David Gilmour-like plaintive guitar melodies. By weaving together guitar electric viola, flute, and samplers with wordless vocal textures, expressive percussion, and movement, the group evokes the universal mind imagining itself — complex interlocking pieces that still form a cohesive whole. This is psychedelic ambient space jazz built for the deep-listening lineage of artists like Laraaji, Harold Budd, Alice Coltrane and others — a necessary ritual in an age of digital isolation.
“My son arrived while these songs were still fresh. Listening back to mixes of the album while holding him, I’d realize my parents did this exact thing, held me a similar way. But the real trippiness came thinking ahead — someday he'll have a consciousness as complex as mine, full of his own hopes and dreams. It felt like cosmic vertigo.”
The experience extends into immersive live shows where movement-reactive visuals and somatic bodywork invite the audience to harmonize with the ensemble. This recursive feedback loop of music, dance, and light transforms the performance into a space for embodied meditation and shared consciousness.
Life Is a Strange Loop is streaming now in full (no singles) as a statement to sit and deeply listen to a full, continuous piece of music. A vinyl edition and limited-edition Loop Talisman jewelry are now available for pre-order online at the VPC General Store.
Links:
Spotify - Artist, Album, Track
Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Apple, Deezer, Facebook, X, Instagram
