New Age Music and the Birth of Quantum Folk
Depending on who asks, you may wonder how I came to put out a religious/New age/Christian/spiritual album. I wanted to share how my ideas came to be and why I'm creating spiritually oriented music.
I think I decided to create an album of New Age music for two reasons.
- One, I wanted to create spiritual music closer to what my wife Melissa and I usually listen to and like.
- Two, it seemed everyone from Bono, to music pr expert Ariel Hyatt to my producer Andy Dana were (are) talking about niche's in music.
I think of this album as New Age because I was very careful about what kind of messages and vibrations let free in both the making of the music and the making of the project. And that is my definition of New Age music in a nutshell; it's music for an audience that is discerning about what types of messages enter their ears and influence the deepest emotional recesses of the brain.
Which is a responsibility I take very seriously.
Does my album sound like New age music? It's not meditation music and it doesn't have dreamy landscapes, ambient relaxation loops, or waterfalls, crickets and native american flutes. It sounds more like a metaphysical conversation with rock artists I admire. U2, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison, Gary Louris and I (with utmost humility) at the table in a discussion about how to present this new music, these new ideas to a pop audience.
I am working on a body of work that seeks to promote elation, that seeks to come alongside folks walking towards an evolutionary horizon. If rock n roll is about sex, drugs and rock n roll, I think my version of events look past the illusion of freedom that rock presents. And I think New Age is a sound without limits, as rock was until it got tripped up on the carnal mind euphoria and erected walls around the perceived wild gardens.- Melle