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Floating in Space with Sounds of the Dawn
Get lost in a great online portal for New Age music.
For more than a decade, the cassette hub Sounds of the Dawn has explored the infinite well of new age, ambient, relaxation, and meditation tapes from the 1970s-1990s, documenting and resurrecting instrumental sounds driven by soothing melodies, ethereal synthesizers, one-world rhythms and the occasional pew-pew laser gun sound. Based in Holland, the inscrutable blog and NTS 1 show has consistently uncovered one-of-a-kind tapes that they then upload to various channels. The monthly two-hour NTS show is a fount of surprises. SotD recently uploaded this tape by Akikaze.
We say inscrutable because Sounds of the Dawn doesn’t seemed to be at all driven by ego; the producer(s) aren’t forward-facing, don’t push their collecting acumen or curatorial genius. They just keep amplifying sounds that flourished around the world starting in the 1970s, when cassette duplication afforded non-commercial, independent producers and creators the opportunity to dupe tapes to sell at concerts, spas, meditation centers and new age conventions.
By the 1980s, New Age music was infiltrating the VHS market by creating visually trippy videos to go along with their sonically out-there sounds. This 8-hour mix made by Sounds of the Dawn is fascination and beautiful.
The New Age movement, from a music business perspective, was a revolution as important and disruptive as punk rock — as noncommercial, rebellious and inspired — while lacking any sort of media coverage. Aside from condescending mainstream stories or articles, few publications took the music seriously and even fewer deemed it worthy of critical analysis. As a result, a lot of the tapes that Sounds of the Dawn uncovers seemed beamed from another galaxy.
On Bandcamp, Sound of the Dawn sells limited edition reissues of noted tapes from its archive, which tend to go fast. If you’ve never spent quality wormhole time getting lost in the hub’s seemingly endless collection of work, you’re in for a treat. Listen loud.
On Tuesday at In Sheep’s Clothing NYC, we’ll be convening for our weekly Dedicated Listening Sessions to get lost in some New Age classics. Join us starting at 2 p.m. for three hours of classic New Age vinyl from our collection.
Dedicated Listening: New Age Classics
When: Tuesday, April 22, 2-5 p.m.
Where: ISC NYC, 350 Hudson St. (enter on King)
