Ashan: Sacred Spring
Inner Islands

Path of the Sun: Path of the Sun
Inner Islands

Available in digital and cassette formats, these recent Inner Islands releases reflect the rich terrain traversed by its roster artists, one the label's long-running showrunner and the other a recently established partnership. Though Sean Conrad has issued many an Ashan set, Sacred Spring, the thirteenth release under the name, shows the project is far from creatively spent. The third chapter in a so-called ‘Drifters Series,' the latest collection presents eight evocations crafted using a combination of different methodologies. Recorded between March and October, 2020 in Oakland, California, the release was birthed as the world was derailed by the global pandemic.

Like 2018's Far Drift Afield and 2019's Transfigurations, Conrad grounded Sacred Spring in generative music techniques. Having defined a set of sonic parameters and challenging himself to produce one track per day over a couple of weeks, he enabled random sequences of melodies, rhythms, and textures to develop into twenty pieces, each ten to twelve minutes in duration, of raw material. He then built on that foundation by finessing and overdubbing to bring the music to its final form, while all the while staying committed to the series concept.

Forty-eight minutes in total, Sacred Spring invites absorption of the fullest kind. Blossoming slowly, each meditation offers a serene space for reflection and encourages inner transport. Synthetic textures, dulcimer, flute, and other acoustic sounds blend into soul-soothing tapestries, any one of which could have been extended to an hour-long presentation. Sprinkled with wisps of melody that tease the ear suggestively, “Unbroken Circle” evokes a peaceful tropical locale where waves crash ashore. A stately motif punctuates slow-motion ebbs and flows during “Slanted Light,” with Conrad showing immense mastery in his handling of pacing, dynamics, and timbre. Like light glinting through trees, entrancing productions such as “Blue Pulse” and “White Digitalis” shimmer with gentle resplendence. Every one of these eight compact expressions is an irresistible jewel of sultry seduction and optimally experienced at an engulfing volume.

In contrast to Sacred Spring, Path of the Sun presents two twenty-minute compositions, the soundscapes as immersive as those on the Ashan release but more intense and teeming with activity. A collaborative effort by Daniel Guillén (Lunaria) and Steve Targo (Inner Travels), the release is their debut under the Path of the Sun moniker. It was perhaps inevitable that the two would come together, given that their musical paths have developed in tandem over the past half-decade and that their sensibilities are so complementary. From their respective home bases in Spain and the United States, Guillén and Targo initiated the recording process by separately creating twenty minutes of material for the other to build onto, with the material developing methodically thereafter.

As intimated by the title, the music's unfolding was designed to mirror the trajectory of the sun as it rises in the East, illuminates the earth and its creatures with warmth as it moves across the sky, and gradually disappears, bringing night before the cycle starts anew. A mix of ambient washes, bell tinklings, and synthesizer warblings immediately suggests the sound design on Path of the Sun will dazzle robustly. To that end, “Aquatic Sun” unfolds like a fever dream teeming with vibrant life-forms—more a cross-pollination of psychedelia and New Age than ambient per se. Like cloud shapes advancing overhead, tones and washes stretch out, punctuated all the while by a constant babble of bird and insect vocalizations, until a comparatively peaceful resolution is achieved. Anything but static, “Aquatic Sun” progresses through multiple episodes, some dense and exploding with detail, others minimal and stripped-down. Its partner, “Portal of Twilight,” eases into position peacefully, with shimmering organ tones filling out the sound field and radiant textures expanding it multi-dimensionally thereafter. Pulsating like some simmering geological entity, it's the sedate one of the two, though it does gradually swell to an epic, starry-eyed pitch.

April 2021