m88nstruck

My new instrumental album CONVOCATIONS is out today: https://sufjanstevens.ffm.to/convocations

Here’s some notes I wrote on the subject of instrumental music:

“New Age” music has a bad rap, probably because of all the silly pan flutes, chimes, and synth beds they play at yoga class or in the massage parlor. I wouldn’t even call that music. It’s more like wallpaper—a warm background aesthetic, soothingly generic and ambiguously “ethnic.” It serves a grand purpose of total blandness—its avoidance of true substance allows you to focus on healing and health while doing the downward dog or getting your calves rolled out. It’s not great art, but it serves a purpose. I refuse to judge it. I believe there’s a time and a season for everything.

A lot of great music that falls within the category of “New Age” doesn’t necessarily prescribe to these bland tropes. Ambient instrumental music may soothe and inspire, but it can also create a world of surprise and astonishment. The sounds themselves, absent of verbal language, can speak volumes. “New Age” music doesn’t always have to be about calm and relaxation—it can also be about an awakening, a passageway to catharsis, a journey to a new consciousness, or a spiritual exorcism. It seeks to change the chemical particles of our reality without enforcing plot. It lifts the hairs on your neck. It transforms your heart. It moves mountains…. and other aphorisms.  

I suppose “New Age” suffers from bad terminology and negative connotations because of its functional nature. It often serves a positive and palliative purpose above all else. So perhaps we should broaden our scope and call it something else: “instrumental music,” “ambient music,” or “mood music.” Music without words. (Or very few words.) Music that doesn’t seek to tell a story. Music without literary affectation or narrative. Music absent of vocabulary. Soundscape. Landscape. Soothescape? It’s such a conundrum to name things that repudiate language in the first place. Perhaps this is why we often make up words to make sense of it, or to put it in its place, however condescending: i.e. Muzak.

Language is an incredible tool. But it can also be a total bitch. When we speak, we often conspire to reduce everything to semaphores of construct and functionality—signs and symbols tasked to explain a reality whose beauty or mystery is negligible. We manipulate with words. We coddle. We confuse. We use language to control our fate. We use language to acclaim arrogance and ego. We weaponize language. We ascribe greatness to its usage and fidelity. We use language to construct false realities. We use language to obfuscate and oppress. We use language to lie, cheat and steal. We use language to destroy. I suppose this is the inevitable nature of humanity in the throes of its most powerful tool: free speech. In Genesis, God created the universe by speaking it into existence. Not much later, He used language to curse that creation and speak it out of existence with a flood. Every time we open our mouths we are playing God, for better or for worse. I suppose the lesson is: watch what you say. Or, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Language has certainly served us greatly as well. We use it to tell stories, to draft laws and constitutions, to perpetuate democratic ideals and human equity. Language is power; it constructs reality. And, I admit, it has been an indelible cornerstone in my work. As a singer/songwriter, I have used words to process joy and suffering, to conjure stories and fables, to communicate transcendence, and to exclaim my truths. But language has often let me down as well. There are so many things I just cannot shape into a song. Words fail me. And more often, in the wake of current events—and in the present state of reality—I find myself utterly speechless. Sometimes things get so weird and so terrible, there is nothing you can sing (or say) about it. We find ourselves dumbfounded. Or fed up, overwhelmed, incapacitated. In an age of information, anxiety, inequity, and with so much access to unprecedented excess, I sometimes worry that language has let us down, and that—through sloppiness, irresponsibility, and bad stewardship—we have done language a grave disservice, and that our indulgence in its whims has led us to committing an abuse of power. Perhaps it’s the curse of too much of a good thing. Social media and the 24-hour news cycle perpetuate these verbal pathologies. The daily onslaught of click-bait, tweets and all-caps headlines finds us short of breath and at a loss for words. What is the responsible, humane way of responding to all this content?

Silence is golden. But it cannot be propagated. It just is.  Or, more appropriately, it just isn’t. The next best thing, for me, is the drone. Or the simple tone. The chime of a bell. The breathy tone of the pan flute. The synth bed. The resounding chant of the Sanskrit “Aum.” The cornerstone of “New Age” music. See now, we’ve come full circle. We’re back in yoga pants and listening to our heartbeat. This is a good thing.

Some of my favorite music is “New Age” adjacent — minimalism, drone music, mood music, environmental soundscape, non-verbal pop music, meditation music, tone poems, movie soundtracks, etc. Some of my favorite albums have no words at all, or very few intelligible ones (or, in some cases, the words are secondary and do not inform my listening experience at all). To name a few: Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air. Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand. Glassworks by Philip Glass. Everything by Enya. Vangelis’s soundtrack to Bladerunner. Everything by Julius Eastman. Peter Gabriel’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Roberto Lange’s Island Universe Series. Mother Earth’s Plantasia by Mort Garson. Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants. Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn. Everything by the Boards of Canada. Everything by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Everything by Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, Christian Fennesz, and Wolfgang Voigt. The list goes on.