CHANNELERS “Isles Beyond” (Inner Islands)

How does one get to a place that’s as Zen as Sean Conrad’s state of mind at exactly all times? Because if someone’s got the secret, I’d like to know about. Maybe it’s not such a secret after all – Conrad’s been running Inner Islands for a minute now, and this is his tenth (!) Channelers release, and first since 2015. He’s recorded solo and with others as Ashan, Orra, Skyminds, and he’s surrounded himself with a likeminded group of astral travelers and interior explorers. The secret is all in the music itself – bottled, distilled, ready for distribution.

 

Isles Beyond is an exploration of devotional improvisation utilizing mainly acoustic instruments, and the results are stunning (as per friggin usual). No one goes down a meditative path like Sean Conrad does – he’s just the new master of the new New Age headspace, perfectly placing those dulcimer hits and those guitar string plucks and those piano fragments. It’s even more impressive that Conrad does not wield a synthesizer like a crutch – it’s so easy to draw out those tones (and I LOVE me some cosmic synth work, don’t get me wrong), but here the music is much more lived in, the subtleties much more natural, the spirituality much more accessible. How is it that each Channelers release is as gloriously uplifting as the last? It’s that secret again – it’s in the DNA of the music.

 

https://channelers.bandcamp.com/

 

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

CHANNELERS “Isles Beyond” C60 (Inner Islands)

Primarily acoustically composed with dulcimer and piano, Channelers’ most recent long-burner showcases riff after wholesome new-age riff of serene vibes and cosmic breezes to curl up and power nap inside of. It's seriously like listening to a warm cup of lightly-honeyed chamomile tea.

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/album/isles-beyond

and/or

http://www.innerislands.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

CHANNELERS “Depth of Rest” C42 (Inner Islands)

If Ashan’s (Sean Conrad/Inner Islands) recently released “Transfigurations" album embodied the centering breath and its power over one’s wayward consciousness, SC’s other primary altar* ego’s following release as Channelers, this “Depth of Rest”, acts more as a Yerba Mate-fueled, micro-dosed hiking meditation.

Pairing rich environmental field recordings with synth pads, dulcimer, and Irish low whistle(!), DoR excitedly wrangles our stirrups and tugs us along a spirited* trek through straight-up M-A-G-I-C-A-L arboreal ecosystems, leading us down shady, gentle streams, ducking under fallen redwoods, getting tickled by ginormous ferns…you get the idea. This is a glorious New Age pick-me-up with some mild psychedelic overtones** that’s well, well worth back to back listens while hitting your favorite woodland trails!

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/album/the-depth-of-rest

and/or

http://thegentleways.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*intentional

**Riders on the Storm-style!

CHANNELERS “The Depth of Rest” C42 (Inner Islands)

There is no one better at filling their days with beautiful and fascinating meditative music than Sean Conrad, aka Channelers, aka the purveyor of Inner Islands records. This is good news for all of us out here, somewhere beyond the boundaries of Oakland, California (and probably for everyone within those boundaries as well), because if we are lucky enough to get our hands on a Channelers (or Ashan or Orra or whatever) release, our days can also be filled with beautiful and fascinating meditative music. This time around Channelers tackles The Depth of Rest, and by tackles, I mean Conrad really plows into this thing and wrestles it to the ground – all in the most delicate and respectful of ways. Imagine getting so wound up that you have to plow into the idea of “rest” like it’s the WWF defending champion or something! That would be idiotic.

But still, and seriously, the “Channelers way” is in full effect here on The Depth of Rest, its four languid tracks full to bursting with field recordings of birds and insects and water – basically the outdoors with accompaniment from “keyboards, dulcimer, and Irish low whistle.” If that sounds like what you’d expect from Sean Conrad, you’d be right. But Channelers keeps growing, keeps evolving, even though it’s all within that New Age idiom. The depth of melody and consistency of vibe continue to astound, and Channelers continues to be at the crest of the Inner Islands modus operandi. It’s all dream state, probably all the time around II HQ, so somebody’s gotta get in there and craft new fantasy suites and “[project] magical realism … onto the canvas of ordinary perceived reality.” That someone might as well be Sean Conrad. He’s pretty much the best at it.

https://channelers.bandcamp.com/

http://www.innerislands.com/

--Ryan

CHANNELERS “Entrance to the Next” C44 (Inner Islands)

Historically, Sean Conrad (Inner Islands’ fountainhead)’s Channelers project has been the more ambient/free-form spring of his to flow forth gorgeous ambient/dronal beatitudes…but with his earlier (ASHAN/ Far Drift Afield) release picking up that loosey-goosey, serendipitous sway-baton, I wondered where Channelers would go...

Turns out... further Glacial, into the flawlessly-polished, silvery-mirrored cave-of-consciousness. Slow-motion tip-toe. Vibrator-enhanced cafunés, under lavender breeze. “Entrance to the Next” is the incremental soundtrack to parading towards all meditations of yesterdays’ afterlifes’ very sum. Think “peace”, but, like, the sound of it, of bitterness’s very absentia. SC is on the next level, and his myriad projects dig deeper and deeper into Valhalla’s ceiling. Turn on. Tune in. Drop…

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/album/entrance-to-the-next

and/or

http://thegentleways.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplanj

CHANNELERS “Slow Leaf Spell” (Inner Islands)

“Patterns and repetitions to contrast the ever-changing self.” We know Sean Conrad gets it. Over his many releases as Channelers, Ashan, and half of Orra, as well as curating the like-minded he surrounds himself with on his label Inner Islands, Conrad has become an institution, a purveyor of inner peace and personal betterment through meditative music, or music and meditation, and his corner is an easy one to be in because it’s all done in the interest of harmonizing yourself with your environment before embarking on a path of sharing that peace and joy with others. That’s why his pastoral ambient/drone/folk tunage is the sincerest pastoral ambient/drone/folk tunage, his personal pumpkin patch of sound is surely the one the Great Pumpkin is going to visit this Halloween. Over four languid tracks, Conrad explores change as he stretches out his compositions and allows them to become their own entities, growing and evolving along with their composer until they become one in the mind and the heart. As always with Channelers releases, there’s that great “Om” potential where inward projection of consciousness may just indeed lift you to some higher plane of tranquility. Consider the fern on the cover of “Slow Leaf Spell,” and imagine the sounds passing up and down the living cells of the plant, energizing it and allowing it to align its vibrations with that of ours. As we listen and contemplate the cellular workings of it, we are slowly and methodically hypnotized by its life force. We can learn from that, and we can make the Inner Islands way, the Channelers way, a part of our own existence.

Channelers 

Inner Islands

--Ryan Masteller

CHANNELERS "Faces of Love" C40 (Inner Islands)

Inner Islands is well known for deeply zen, mind-clearing, meditational releases, and this release from Channelers,  "Faces of Love" is no exception. I would like to throw around a lot of dreamy terminology about how this music helps you find your inner dimension, the essence of peace floating on a calm ocean of tranquility, but instead, I would like to focus on how analog this music sounds. The warmth and stillness of this recording nears something sacred.  It evokes wide open spaces filled with natural light, and one could uses it to prepare for sleep, or to prepare to truly awaken. 

Side A is called "Always Been" and it's twenty minutes of harmonium infused bliss. Side B, entitled "Pressure Sigh," blesses you with minimal notes from a bright and shining piano, each utterance fading into the distance for so long that the next note surprises you with its arrival. The two sidelong pieces compliment each other perfectly

Presented for you in a pro-dubbed chrome tape, white cassette with black print on both sides, and a three-panel J-card. Edition of seventy-five.

innerislands.bandcamp.com

www.innerislands.com

-- Gray Lee

CHANNELERS “Space Makes Clearing” (Inner Islands)

You guys, I’m not … I’m not kidding. I like Channelers, I really do. Inner Islands label-head Sean Conrad’s go-to moniker for all things beatific, Channelers always unfolds in new and exciting ways. Essex did our heads in with synthy aqua swells, and Arden Tapes, while not actually being tapes, turned inward with acoustic guitar passages. But Space Makes Clearing might be the one – it might actually be the one to break your brain and send it on a permanent astral trip. If not that, then it’s at least going to be the morphine in your drip, the feel-good pulse every time you hit that button from your hospital bed. Or at least that’s how it seems – you don’t have to be incapacitated or injured or something to convalesce. Conrad knows that – that’s why his tunes are the balm for what ails you, never mind how serious your ailment or incapacitated you may feel. I write this at 9:17pm on November 8, 2016, and I’ve got a deep dissatisfaction in my soul. By the time you read this, you’ll be a step ahead of me in understanding the direction our world, but right now I’ve got the uncertainty blues, and Space Makes Clearing is the one thing that’s propping my spirits in an upright direction at the moment. Guitars, synthesizers – other instruments? Probably – combine for maximum peace-ing out, and arpeggios shimmer like stars and souls and trickle like rivulets and life force into a vast expanse. I mean, he’s got a track called “Praise for Life in All Its Forms,” for crying out loud! “Your Spell Is on the Wind” might as well be called that, or the utterly fantastic “Clear Guidance Golden Chords” – check that, “Clear Guidance” is absolutely perfectly titled in its harp-y, angelic goodness. But still, take Sean Conrad’s entire body of work – Channelers, Ashan, Orra, Inner Islands, whatever else – and apply “Praise for Life in All Its Forms” to it. Why don’t the vast majority of other people follow this particular track? It’s a travesty, I tell you. I’m seriously considering making a loop of Space Makes Clearing and pumping it through my speakers all day, at various volumes depending on how closely I want to pay attention. I have a feeling it will be very close, most of the time. Backing off the trepidation now – I’ve got good vibes all day long with this thing. Who cares who wins this election at the moment (but really, you should absolutely care, I’m just editorializing), there’s so much to look forward to. Channelers just happens to be the perfect musical accompaniment for self-actualization.

Inner Islands

Channelers

--Ryan Masteller

CHANNELERS “Essex” (Inner Islands)

Water. Water is the key, and water is what Sean Conrad, aka Channelers, aka label honcho at Inner Islands, aims to, er, immerse us in throughout his new ambient masterpiece Essex. I mean, look at that cover, for crying out loud! That’s a person wading into a lake or something. See those ripples emanating from the hazy figure disturbing the stillness of the surface? For all we know, they continue infinitely out of frame. Who cares if that would fly in the face of physical or thermodynamic laws – physics and thermodynamics don’t rule my imagination, that’s for sure! Nor do they have any purchase within the psychological framework of human consciousness. So I can drift in them for the rest of eternity, on an endless, unbroken liquid plane, and not even worry about how the universe works. I can just be.

There it is. Just be. Can you imagine tuning your own consciousness into the exquisite life force of the cosmos, or expanding your perception of that cosmos so that you realize its existence inside of you? That’s the whole Inner Islands aesthetic – expanding within, journeying to the isolated regions where you are filled only and permanently with peace and harmony. Traversing vast expanses of water. All in the name of true, uninterrupted rest.

And “Rest” is the track that opens Essex, all eleven minutes and eleven seconds of it. And because 11:11 is the magic number on all digital clocks, there’s a numerological element to it that gives it power. Probably. I’m going to listen to it at 11:11 today and see what happens. My guess – the song slows time just enough so that it can be played entirely within that single minute. But that’s just a guess. The track begins the tape perfectly, introducing the liquid theme with pastoral synthesizers, recalling Belgium’s Dolphins into the Future at times, and setting the stage for interior drift. The dual themes – water, introspection – continue with obvious nods: “Regenerations at the Night Pool,” the gorgeous acoustic guitar/synth concoction “Moved by Streams,” and the nostalgic “Longing to Swim in the Realm of My Childhood Dream” represent the former (well, both, I guess), and “Safe Space” and “Passing My Heart through the Place of Questions” the latter.

Undoubtedly Channelers, and Inner Islands in general, exists to provide escapist realms to us weary searchers, those who are disillusioned and fed up with the insanity of the world around us. And Channelers does that, but not at the expense of trying to make oneself a better person. Introspection comes with a responsibility to project that inner tranquility outward, to strive toward bringing that type of peace to everyone. Remember the old Salvation Army motto? Sharing is caring, people! Now, let’s all fucking make this world a better place.

Inner Islands

Channelers

--Ryan Masteller

CHANNELERS “They are Cloaked in Stars and Rivers” C35 (Inner Islands)

Inner Islands has put out some pretty stellar tapes in the past half-decade, including a 4 way split with Panabrite, Hakobune, Oliwa and Former Selves that ought to be fetching them high-fives and back-pats for the rest of the 2010’s at least. If you haven’t heard the Hear Hums shit yet, you’re in for a real goddamn treat. The label primarily focuses on ambient/experimental/new-agey stuff, and, for me, sometimes there’s juuuuust a li’l too much techno-ish percussion for my liking, and this particular release almost goes there. Almost.

There’s a good Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of space to float in and out of consciousness to here, with slow delay/tremolo heavy ghost riff-age of guitar lines that feel just slightly out of focus behind the sparse, crisp, metronomic hand percussion of a deep conga drum or maybe claves. Is that a cowbell? Train-crossing warning? Some droning synth lines waft in here & there, some airplane-engine-low, some higher, IASOS style, delightfully-cheesy ones, too, to round out the dynamic range.

By the third time through, I really began to dig this album for its potential as a great mood setter. They’ve really perfected the balance of relaxing, mellow swaths of harmonious sound with the maximum groove required for a most subtlest of hip-shakings without reasonably being called too distracting for most workspaces. I’d suggest listening to the whole album in one go, as the charm might not come through with hasty sampling of the tracks.

https://innerislands.bandcamp.com/album/they-are-cloaked-in-stars-and-rivers

and/or

http://innerislands.bandcamp.com/merch

- - Jacob An Kittenplan