1980-84: SunPath - Dream Music [reissue]

The dutiful heads at Leaving Records have done us good with this one: from the strange and mysterious depths of 1980s New Mexico comes Jeff Berry, a New Age outsider whose two privately issued tapes under the name SunPath are finally glimpsing the shimmering light of day, and their potency does not disappoint. As with Light In The Attic’s holy underground opus I Am The Center, the sounds contained within Dream Music are bound to New Age only in the deepest sense possible, defined by endless, 30-minute slabs of warbling color, phantasmic instruments, and earthly field recordings made musical through the sheer ambience of their infinity. Each of these four meditations refract and disperse light through different means, some cleansing, some darkening; I offer an interpretation of each in the hopes of illuminating and strengthening their respective pull on my busy, clouded mind ~

1980: Yasimin and the Snowflake Dragon

“Jasmine” ~ A portal opens, and the past returns to now. Sparkling currents of obsidian pass underneath, not sinister but refusing to deny their significance. Overhead, air pouring through clouds, impossible to repeat yet always, always the same. Slowly, a religious heightening — all waves fully in motion, intertwining, parting, harmony between disorder. Prehistoric and planetary, powerful in peace.

“Snowflake Dragon” ~ What begins as tribal is soon unveiled to be the future. Celebration through chimes, synthesizer, pulsing arpeggios, a deep and bowed exhale. Staid beauty, orbiting radiance, distilled movement.

1984: SunPath 2

“Gá Te” ~ An opera of the unseen. Violent winds turn to radiant core; beams of sunken earth rise into shape only to become leveled once more. Though shrouded in a curtain of silence, a transformation is taking place, an awakening.

“Stream and Crystal” ~ Clarity and connection, reincarnation through dream. Nourishing, oblique passages of water flowing into water becoming water turning back into water. Held within the altar of the world. A memory.



DeLorean

There’s a lot of good music out there, and it’s not all being released this year. With DeLorean, we aim to rediscover overlooked artists and genres, to listen to music historically and contextually, to underscore the fluidity of music. While we will cover reissues here, our focus will be on music that’s not being pushed by a PR firm.

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