An Ode to Gravity
I found myself, a few weeks back, talking to a couple of friends about 'acceptable' New Age music and one of them mentioned the Crystal Vibrations blog, particularly recommending the celestial tones of Iasos and a record by ex-Brainticket man Joel Vandroogenbroeck. However, the greatest discovery this blog had for me came by way of a post about Joanna Brouk's overtone music, which appeared on a radio programme called Ode to Gravity in 1972. Either a producer of this programme or listener has done me a great favour by uploading many of the shows to Archive.org. Each one runs for at least an forty minutes and covers a wide range of experimental music from the 70s and 80s. Highlights including: Annea Lockwood in conversation with Pauline Oliveros; Luc Ferrari on Monologos I; John Cage; the amazing Bob Cobbing; Peter Michael Hamel (previously mentioned on this blog); Conlon Nancarrow; Eno; Charlamagne Palestine; Robbie Basho (circa Zarthus!); Trevor Wishart; and many, many more.

This is a good opportunity to point interested parties toward Donna Weston's doctoral thesis on Music and Musical Thought of the "New Age", completed at the Queensland Conservatorium. Particularly interesting are chapters four and six, which discuss how 19C Spiritualism, Mesmerism, Transcendentalism and Theosophy would come to influence the New Age movement. Some 19C schemes of the music of the spheres are discussed therein, along with the work of Bailly, whose Chant des Voyelles I have briefly discussed here, along with a digital realisation.