New Age booms, softly

McGuire’s music evolved from punk to a mix that draws deeply on New Age.

A sign on the door of Body Actualised Centre in Bushwick, Brooklyn, promised ‘Cosmic Yoga’, but on a recent snowy night, a crowd had gathered for a concert. Slushy boots were confiscated in the lobby, and about 75 patrons in their 20s and 30s sat cross-legged on pillows or reclined on blankets on the floor. The space was lit, just barely, by botanica candles, placed amid potted trees and colourful crystals. The aroma of incense permeated the room.

In front of them, Mark McGuire, the former guitarist of Emeralds, stood behind two synthesisers, summoning a pleasant drone. While some closed their eyes and rocked gently, McGuire added a crackly recording of a lecture on The Universe According to Esoteric Philosophy by the mystic Manly P Hall. Eventually, McGuire began to loop a phrase of Hall’s — “The only reason for existence is this perpetual growth” — until the words were distorted beyond recognition. Then he began to play guitar over it, first fluid and crystalline, then fiery and molten.

McGuire, 27, began his career in the Midwestern hardcore punk scenes. He’s one of several musicians whose music reflects a confluence of psychedelia, electronic music and the eccentric cousin of those genres — New Age. A generation of younger musicians with an affinity for analogue electronics has re-examined this long-derided category , borrowing liberally from New Age’s sonic palette: hypnotic repetition, spacey guitar noodling and soft synths.

Elements of New Age can be found among a diverse range of artists, including Julianna Barwick, Sun Araw, Bitchin Bajas, Matthewdavid and Greyghost. “New-age music now has the contemporary electronic underground and the noise underground infused in it,” McGuire said.

At the same time, New Age pioneers from the late 1970s are being rediscovered through a series of reissues, including Celestial Soul Portrait, a collection showcasing the electric flute improviser Iasos, and several volumes by the zither player Laraaji, including Essence/Universe and Celestial Music: 1978-2011.

Perhaps most audacious is the compilation I Am the Centre:1950-1990, which posits the genre as “great American folk art”. It was overseen by Douglas Mcgowan, a 37-year-old label proprietor who made proselytising for New Age a personal crusade.
“I saw in New Age this way to help people re-establish a sense of wonder,” Mcgowan said. “That’s so pretentious sounding, but that’s how I honestly feel.”

Mcgowan defines New Age as “the sound of contentment and peace”. On the other hand, Stephen Hill, the host of Hearts of Space (a long-running nationally syndicated public radio show devoted to “Slow music for fast times”), is more circumspect. “Originally, it was every kind of unclassifiable music, just because it filled a categorical need in a record store,” he said. Hill prefers the term “spacemusic”.

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It’s difficult today to separate new age music from the culture that nurtured it, a post-hippie hodgepodge of Western self-help and Eastern mysticism. The serene recordings, often intended as meditation tracks, are the opposite of the beat-heavy tracks of today’s producers of electronic dance music.

According to McGuire, the theme of his new album Along the Way (released this month), is “self-exploration and exploration of the world around you”.

Hill sees New Age’s appeal as timeless. “It’s been really essential in religious, sacred and contemplative music for thousands of years, so I think the value of it is in the psychological payoff that people who are receptive to it experience,” he said.

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