#avantroot

Iñigo Medina is an architect and sound artist from Spain, and he thus far has released a handful of deep techno works as M4, with tracks appearing on compilations from Redsonja Records and Slope Point. His newest and most expansive release came out at the end of 2025 on Avantroot Records and is titled Reset Series (Music for Stress Reduction and Creative Meditation). This work takes the form of an extended hour-long set split across two sides of tape and here, the producer takes a different and more meditational direction, exploring music intended for vibrational healing, brainwave re-alignment, trance state ascension, inner space travel, and attuning to deeper states of mental and spiritual awareness. As well, Medina explains in the liner notes that the music has a functional aspect, and has been used for sessions of harmonic yoga.

Though the intentions behind the project sound very new age, the soundworld on Reset Series is more modernistic than is typical for music in this ideological mold. Using analog synthesizers and a general focus on hardware, Medina employs technoid textures, drifting downtempo rhythms, energies of cosmic chillout, and atmospheres of ambient dub, which combine with emotionally effecting synthesizer symphonics and kinetic cascades of 70s-style kosmische sequencing. It’s a futuristic vision of the new age of new age, one that sees multiple intertwining moods and movements woven together into a kaleidoscopic collage—the various parts transitioning together—sometimes suddenly shifting, other times deftly threaded together via natural field recordings, or overlapping melodic themes. The result is music of continuous transformation, which creates the same sensation for the listener as it does for Medina...which is a feeling of "floating and drifting on a moving sea."

M4 - Reset Series: Music for Stress Reduction and Creative Meditation (Avantroots Records, 2025) On “Part I” of Reset Series, which occupies the A-side, a holy hum fades in, while purling pools of muted synthesis evoke a moonlit body of peacefully swirling liquid, with everything accented by delay pedals that puff out dark currents of air. Next comes haunted and harrowing mid-bass throbs and delirium decays of metronomic echo, while cinematic sci-fi strings from the school of Brad Fiedel lead to a cold and minimalist wasteland of pads, pulses, and decaying grey fog…all until a FAX-leaning chillout beat enters, which is structured around the barest semblance of cymbal taps and rhythm box drum hits. And above all of this, stormcloud crashes of galactic chord ambiance smolder and churn in the miasmic sky. The next passage features future fantasy arps like organic crystals aglow with alien new age energy, which are backgrounded by swimming sub bass vibrations and gentle submarine pads that somehow sound like an adolescent choir of mermaids heard across some vast seafloor distance, From here, chattering broadcast voices and exploratory kosmische bass sequences set out for aquatic exploration…the sonics attempting to capture the mystical experience and meditative wonder of scuba diving the depths of some exoplanetary ocean. And through it all, the sequences morph and mutate through reverb…sometimes dry and direct…other times nearly vaporizing away…while overhead, mystical futurist frequencies of subduing static and spiritual squelch ring out towards an infinite interstellar horizon. Bouncing bulbous bass chords carry beneath the same squelching static structures from the previous section, with cymbals taps and chillout trance voices repeating around each other, taking the vibe back to a space of 90s ambient rave hypnosis and post-club comedown catharsis. And it eventually blisses further out with birdsong, forest field recordings, and deeply affected Berlin school sequencing overlaid by smooth swimming dub chords and string synths from the shores of eternity. This results in a sort of ambient dub and post-kosmische energy glide that is one of the highlights of the entire journey, wherein stellar sequences ascend up the scale while the lower repetitions create compelling counterstrokes against decaying dub chords. The birdsong returns, and cavernous smoketrails of IDM sequencing flow down into the stereo field, until everything is soon bolstered by a gentle braindance break…which moves the vibe from the world of Schulze and Froese to Aphex Twin and The Black Dog. Overhead, pads moan with a sense of desperation over the layers of percolating dream synthesis, while hissing and throbbing broken beat panoramas continue anchoring the astral groove.

On “Part II” and Side B, heavenly pads and downtempo jazz beats set the stage, while hazy melodic chords from some fantasy ocean environment waft over it all…the whole landscape bleary, blurred, and daydream-like. A tropical rainstorm carries into the scene, bringing with it melancholic melodic synths the can’t help but momentarily  remind me of Bedouin Ascent...that is, until the track develops into a more new age and space music-esque droning drift, with a dynamic dance of multi-layered sequencers from the school of Tangerine Dream adding a sense of captivating cosmic drama. Everything flows in and out of focus via reverberant manipulation, and the synthesizer motions seem to shine in colors of psychotropic neon. The rain carries through to mournful pads that filter over bass heavy progressions of echo-laced breakbeat mesmerism, though everything is spread out, gaseous, and extremely hypnagogic. It’s a subliminal Skam-style section of ambient IDM and dreamscape downtempo with a mournful and constantly mutating character, but it’s all somehow slower and even more stoned out than that description implies. A mind-melting passage comes next wherein quivering and rotating oscillations chop up the entire atmosphere…like some dynamic and rotational weather warping machine malfunctioning while industrial bass tones hum and thrum. And more of those sad and somber cinematic string synths sing out…as if a sci-fi space orchestra is scoring a celestial drama of profound loss. Squelching ambient dub textures and a subdued electronic jazz cymbals sway into the spectrum, and the string machines are still in cinematic sci-fi symphonic mode, though now singing some different theme of galactic mystery and deep space wonder. After this, insectoid textures loop over stretched mental membranes while physical and textural loops of tectonic bass anchor the progression. Smoldering telephonic tracer sequences modulate through echo, sometimes so transformed as to disappear into a fx-generated ether, before re-appearing once more, and reconfiguring from base atomic elements. There is a section of tonal dronal mesmerism, where chakra-aligning chords resonate and create interfering wavefronts of minimalist mind magic…the kind of thing that could score La Monte Young’s Dream House installation. But it’s all soon taken to a more retro-modernist era of chillout hypnotism by static shrouded future-breaks, which cut in and out between haunting LFO-colored string synths and cityscape field recordings. Nearing the end, distorted chord clusters time stretch in strange ways…being pulled out along the temporal scale slowly and rapidly in equal measure…as ecclesiastical bass drones float the soul alongside paradise poly pads. The sound of everything is cozy, caressing, and enticingly experimental in equal measure. And at the very close, further progressions of paradise polysynths bring evocations of verdant summer savanna’s and Afro-folk sun ceremonials, though the soundscape is stripped down and reduced to a pure synthesizer essence…with maybe a small and seductive air of peak-era Phil Collins leaking into the scenery.