Christopher Willits

Gravity

Throughout the last two decades, San Francisco-based musician and multimedia artist, Christopher Willits, has been exploring music as a tool for healing. This has increasingly become his focus, especially during the lockdown, when the anxiety of the unknown seemed to be a part of our everyday lives. In 2017, he released a spatial composition, Horizon, exploring the universe of three-dimensional music. You can read more about the process and his very own audio platform Envelop in this studio special. This year, he’s back on Ghostly International with an eight-piece album, titled Gravity, investigating the intention of deep listening. “Willits encourages listeners to seek an immersive playback setting for the spatial audio recordings (via headphones or speakers) and to let the sound guide the mind’s intrinsic need to process.” The sounds seeping out of his custom Moog guitar, bass guitar, synth and voice, appear to gently ebb against the sand grains, of an ever-agitated, noisy mind. Focusing on individual harmonics, as they flow throughout the dimensions, opens up a world of sound meditation, where instead of breath you find another anchor. This is where your monkey-mind can rest, finding peace, allowing to let go. “For me, this album is like a prayer of gratitude; feeling the curves of life, listening to the balance, acknowledging the ongoing journey,” says Willits. “Every piece is a hymn filled with the balance of acceptance and perseverance, grief and inspiration.” This is therapeutic music, which I will prescribe you for these times, preferably at sunrise, as you set up your intentions for another day. What will it bring; what will it take away? What will you leave behind when you are gone? If you prefer a guided meditation, allow me to recommend you a Christopher Willits rework of a timeless mantra spoken by the late Ram Dass, titled “I Am Loving Awareness,” based on the original piece by East Forest, which features vocals by Krishna Das and tabla by Javad Butah. Both of these are digital releases, which you can find on all of your favourite streaming platforms, or purchase directly via Bandcamp.

Kcin & Tilman Robinson

Requiem for the Holocene

Here’s a record that slipped past your radar, and it almost eluded my own. But fear not – I’m pretty tuned into the sweetest of sounds, and when it comes to this particular collaboration, it’s as sweet as it gets. If you’re not hungrily consuming pretty much everything by Kcin, I’ll have to say that you’re missing out. And if you’re not hungrily consuming pretty much everything by Tillman Robinson, I’ll have to grab you by your shoulders and shake you a bit. Kcin is a project by an Australian Nicholas Meredith, whom I profiled with his two-track release, Sleeplessness and Hopelessness I back in 2019. On this four-piece release, he is joined by an Australian Robinson, who first appeared on these pages back in 2016 with Deer Heart, and I haven’t stopped listening since. Together, the duo weave a suspenseful narrative, full of peaks and valleys of dynamically evolving sound, layered with grit, rumble, and post-industrial modern aesthetic. But then the clouds open up, and droplets of piano keys fall with the sunshine, even as winds of the violent storm gather on. “The music is thick with throbbing bass and distortion-heavy percussive textures but also pauses for breath with its shimmering, piano-rich title track.” The sounds in this requiem are inspired by the unknown and anxiety-ridden future, and all of this was imagined even before we sunk into the current abyss. Originating in live performances from before all the lockdowns, the ideas expressed through the psychological sonics still resonate with us today, persistently building on the “expression of grief for the deterioration of the biosphere as pandemics and unprecedented seasonal disasters continue to ravage Australia in 2022.” The digital EP was released back in April, on the Australian Spirit Level imprint, which I check in with from time to time. Its founder, and the host of the Double J digital radio station, is also a musician, who dabs in more pop-side of electronica – check out his track “Sparrow” if you’re a fan of Moderat and Bonobo.