Review: Mark Banning - Journey to the Light (Students of Decay)
New Age music seems to be entering a reappraisal period, enjoying a well-earned break from acting as cultural shorthand for all things flakey, finally transcending its' association with easy targets like Shirley McLaine and Enya.
Recently, gems have been resurfacing due in part to time allowing for the appropriate distance and perspective. Thanks to the blogosphere, wider recognition of the somewhat blurry lines between New Age, prog, kosmische and ambient have met up with latter-day interests in drone and modular synths. With compilations like I Am the Center (damn, the vinyl set is handsome; proud owner) and artists like Laraaji getting the reissue treatment, it’s as if the connecting lines were all going to fuse together, like it was preordained.
Recorded in northern California in 1984, Journey to the Light is a small-run release unearthed as part of this developing vogue for New Age private-press archaeology. Over two side-long pieces, a web of calm slowly covers you, as waves of rainbow light rise and fall in minute-long breaths, with shimmering speckles of zither, Gottsching-style guitar picking, strings, and a blissful drone slowly ascending and cascading down, starting at the crown chakra and cleansing your being. (Breathe. Relax. Keep your center. You are calm. You are whole. You are white light. Your creative power is unleashing itself right this very moment.)
Skepticism about “me generation” hucksters, higher-self narcissism in yab-yum with entrepreneurial drive and all the rest of the woo woo mysticism aside, New Age music is very practical: an idiomatic headspace you can enter into and frame for yourself as you like when you press play. As a sound deeply rooted in approximation of the psychedelic experience, meditation or mental dreamzone, the bright prismatic utopianism is charming in its naivete, and enjoyable to study or zone out to. Minus all the baggage, some of the work is actually good.
Thanks to a tight remastering job by James Plotkin, all elements are clear and present; the sound of tape is fine sometimes, but the absence of lo-fi hiss and cassette compression keeps everything from sounding like it’s behind a fence. It’s a strong release and I’m sure will sound fantastic on vinyl.
