ozone

 

ozone ~ skyryks (golden ratio frequencies, 2022)

 "throughout skyryks, dark comes to light and the harmony of the cosmos reflects itself in an infinite recursion to find a mirror of your mind in the forms and sounds of music. So lay back, close your eyes, and feel your body dissipate and merge as one with the Ozone." ~ golden ratio frequencies

warped around all of the observable dimensions and inevitably going beyond them with buoyant acceleration, this sonic propulsion of an album gently takes your astral body by the scruff of the neck and throws it into an infinite ocean of melted bliss. carefully crafted with lo-fi samplers and tape-saturated synths, this album creates a world somewhere in the middle between Leaving Records' new-aged electronics and Not Not Fun's rituals from the fourth (or maybe even fifth in this case?) world. intense journey, yet, at the same time, relaxing and re-vitalizing. could've been an effervescent multi-vitamin pill, if it wasn't a cassette tape. but that's good ~ because that way you can enjoy it again and again, without any substantial side effects. and you just have to buy it once.

Skyryks is an obvious reverence to the golden era of new psychedelia, cassette revival, blogspots and mediafire links with new age tape rips, but made with so much love and dedication that it turned into a sonic hologram, where every part has something from all those other parts, influences and inspirations, yet remains a coherent whole, refracting all these sound streams just like a powerful gravitational lens ~ so we can see the whole galaxies inside it.

listen ~ support ~ cassette rip

 

never temple

never temple ~ throwing around an invisible ball (golden ratio frequencies, 2021)

An enigmatic duo that traverses the multiverse of time and space, Jaclyn Blumas (Doomsquad) and Alexandra Duvekot (Blue Crime) have been living in and presenting the world of the NEVER TEMPLE since 2018. We at Golden Ratio Frequencies first encountered their hallucinatory dream world during the 2019 edition of 24hr Drone festival at Basilica Hudson New York, where we were bewitched by their entrancing midnight ritual of haunting synths, ethereal cello, otherworldly voices and fantastical costumes and have been left hypnotised under their spell ever since. ~ GRF

british label Golden Ratio Frequencies is known for its love to all things drone ~ from guitar or analog rawness to digital new-agey bliss, quite often organically combined and always easily transporting you out of this realm. on this tape we have a documentation of url performance of Never Temple from 24-hour long drone festival which took place during the covid days (feels like forever ago). it has a taste of guided meditation tape, with the mesmerizing voice of Jaclyn Blumas reciting some trippy affirmations, though it's never reaches the level of cheesiness those old affirmation cassettes had. instead, it only makes you drown deeper in the thick overlays of synth and organ drones with some lysergic effects happening in the culmination points. the whole thing resembles a ritual which purpose is to reprogram your brain into a more dreamy state of functioning, to make the parking-lot-reality a little bit less persuading ~ as it has no walls after all, especially when you're throwing an invisible ball over them.

listen ~ support ~ youtube [cs rip]

endurance & inner travels

 endurance & inner travels ~ to the ancestors
(golden ratio frequencies, 2024)

 

in the early 10s, when the cassette format has gained a renewed interest, ambient and new age were the genres to embrace it with the most love. one of the prominent projects of that period was Inner Travels, an alias of Steve Targo, a sound healer and experimentalist from Wisconsin. his albums were released at some of the best of today's new age labels ~ Sounds of the Dawn, Inner Islands and Aural Canyon. meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, in Japan, Joshua Stefane under the Endurance alias, released plenty of cassettes as well, exploring the ambient minimalism and running Muzan Editions label together with two friends. guess it was just a matter of time before Steve and Joshua crossed paths in this relatively small world of cassette music but this meeting has brought us something truly beautiful, thanks to another top new age label of our times ~ Golden Ratio Frequencies.

even though Endurance's music could barely pass as new age, there's a certain vibe in it, which makes it close to japanese "environmental music", kankyo ongaku. Inner Travels, on the other hand, was also not so esoteric, as new age could be, but more nature-oriented, with album names like Sea of Leaves, Garden Music or Earth Connection. so what we have on this album (which in fact was made 6 years ago) is an interesting blend of environmental minimalism, clearly rooted in the outputs of such giants as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Takashi Kokubo, crystal clear modular electronica which could easily top instagram trends, and sparse asian melodism, where pauses between notes possibly play even bigger role than the notes... the sort of music which tells you more between the lines ~ and that's probably the reason why there are no track names on this tape, only their duration.

the listener is invited to a ceremony, which sometimes echoes ancient sounds of Gagaku music, but these echoes are traveling under the treetops through a refreshing morning scent of coniferous giants. the edge between the natural and electronic is blurred here ~ it doesn't matter if that's cicada or an electric circuit, both being merely an expression of life's energy which always takes numerous forms, only to express one simple thing ~ the beauty. while beauty is an expression of harmony. looking for harmony is a common place for japanese culture and new age movement, as well as for enviromentalism (most obviously) and basically any spiritual practice. but harmony between people or their doings is rarely achieved if it wasn't build on a solid foundation, namely in harmony with Earth itself. dedicating this [not too modern, yet not too retro] music to the ancestors, Endurance & Inner Travels seem to establish an important bridge between future and past, a little bottle note which says "learn from the trees", keep your roots well in the ground and reach out to the skies, to sunlight. as simple as it is.  

listen ~ support