Mathias Grassow + Jim Cole      Leland Burr

Expansion Project

Jim Cole & Spectral Voice's music at YouTube

Listen to and read about

Spectral Voices' music:

“Achingly poignant”   ~ Bill Beck

 


                                                                “staggering beauty and nuance”   ~ Brian Bieniowski

 

 

                                                    “feeds the imagination” ~ M. Jeffrey Schmidt, Massage Magazine  

 

 

Innertones

Spectral Spiral Music 6 - 2007 - 70:58

 

1. All Within Your Heart and Mind     2. Arches/Far Journeys     3. Spectral Winds, Inward Voices

4. Hear Earth     5. Arches 2     6. Once Upon The Playground         

 

buy the CD or download Innertones

 

Click here for an interview about Innertones  

 

Innertones contains three Spectral Voices pieces recorded in a vast, reverberant water tower (like on their debut Coalescence and follow up Sky) and 3 more recent group and solo recordings from the Gathering Room.

"...the sound of a very personal gnosis, the kind of spiritual leavening that, once glimpsed into, reveals itself to be deep and vast....These Innertones capture a sense of the eternal, somehow, as only the best of ambient music can. This stolen glimpse into an oceanic landscape, foreign and seductive and familiar, is a place that we will never truly know in its entirety....I think you’ll find that these ghostly inner journeys are no less sweet in spite of their tantalizing ephemerality."  

        ~ Brian Bieniowski - Innertones liner notes

 

Some reviews of Innertones:

It is amazing to realize that all the sounds on this CD were created with the human voice. You'd swear you are hearing a full symphony of electronic instruments and choirs, but yet it is indeed the hidden power of this singular voice as revealed by Cole (and on four pieces two other singers join him). Innertones is the sublime soundtrack music of our time, perfect for quiet contemplation, meditation, artistic inspiration, and trips to the stars.

      ~ Christopher Cameron, former radio host "Music of the Spheres" and electronic composer

 

...From joyous and celebratory to minimalistic and ceremonial, Innertones aspires to the highest levels of human expression....Waves of sound resonate beyond the individual parts to create voice-filled ethereal sound structures. Both chilling and glorious, the whistling overtones that characterize this singing style magically materialize in the swirling atmosphere above the sustaining bass and mid-range lines. A fragile apparitional sound, this mystical second tone above the root note comes from just one singer - and provides a deeply profound listening experience. 

                       ~ Chuck van Zyl, STAR'S END

 

 

 

The Way Beyond
Spectral Spiral  Music 5 - 2003

A 73:39 long-form piece with 12 seamless tracks

    Six and Seven      One      Eight      Five      Twelve      Nine      

 

buy the CD or download The Way Beyond

 

Every remarkable sound on the 70+ minute continuous piece is sourced by his voice. Quiet, calming, and meditative; deeply textured and sublime. Achingly poignant.

~ Bill Beck, Spacemusic group list

 

Emotionally charged, meditative and just beautiful. Also the pace of the album is just perfect, moving from dense to open space with just the right amount of beauty, tension and emotion.

~ vidnaObmana

 

....While each cut on the disc has a separate mood or tone, The Way Beyond must be considered as a massive, undulating, living, breathing ambient zone of stillness and, unusually, simultaneous constant change and transition. While the basis of this recording is layered drones comprised solely from Cole's harmonic singing, these layers are overlapped with constantly changing sonic waves and patterns which create the feeling of watching a rushing brook; all motion and churning fluid on top, but a deep, peaceful stillness beneath.

This wordless music, without connotation, has the power to unearth nameless spiritual delight within. There is no question--The Way Beyond is holy music, no matter what your persuasion....it's a paradigm shattering work by one of the brightest lights in today's ambient scene.

~ Brian Bieniowski, The Ambient Review

 

Jim employs a stunning array of sounds, such as walls of synthesizers, didgeridoo, flutes, accordion, cello, vocal choirs, and many heavenly sounds the listener has never heard before. The amazing thing is all of these sounds are performed...with only his voice, using reverb and looping, "live on the fly"!

....There are deep drones and soaring, sustained notes that conjure up primal feelings of wonder and awe....The performances are spellbinding and the sound quality is excellent. This is music that enriches and replenishes the spirit....this is a great disc for meditation, contemplation, yoga or inner journeys!  
                                ~ Dodds Wiley, Ambient.us

 

Imagine a very beautiful and haunting sound, filled with voices and echoes overlaying and blending, bending, growing and decaying, drifting freely in some inner or outer space, and one might have some insight as to where Godspace and The Way Beyond are musically situated. This is spiritual ambient drone music of the highest order....intensely beautiful and mystifying sonic edifices that are at once hypnotic, soothing and transcendent.
                                       ~ Peter Thelen, Expos�

 

 

The Way Beyond   Live:

Click here for a video clip of the "Interstellar Vistas" section of The Way Beyond live -  Jim's 8/1/04 concert.  All of these sounds are Jim's voice - the layers are him looping his overtone voice live.

"Phasing Into  Another Realm"  (The Way Beyond live)  Special thanks to Joyce St. Germaine and all the crew on "The Sacred Journey" program that produced the video from which these clips originate.

"Reaching for the Light" video clip of The Way Beyond live

 

 

 

Coalescence
Spectral Spiral Music 1 - 1997 - 73:13

 

      1. Inner Voices (Calling)    2. Mountainside Morning    3. Haven in the Storm    4. Incantation
 
5. Smile of the Dew    6. Celestial Tides    7. No Thing, and Joy    8. Noctilucent Clouds

9. Ocean Depths    10. Heartbeat to Avalon    11. Primeval Forest    12. Blue India

13. Shimmering Silhouettes    14. Nuage    15. Skylark    16. Sun Shower    17. Merge

18. Outback Shaman Fry    19. As Were the Ancients    20. Spreading the Breath

21. Coalescence

 

buy the CD or download Coalescence

 

...breathtaking in its elegant mystical atmosphere.

                                      ~ Steve Roach

 

 Every now and then a little known album will crawl out from underneath more famous artists and scream for attention.  This CD is Coalescence by Jim Cole and Spectral Voices....amazing improvised compositions by voice alone.   This is one heck of an ethereal album.

~ Allan Bogle (WEVL), "Ambient Spectrum," NAV

 

This is music that touches something primal....not to be missed by anyone who sees music (and especially the human voice) as a vehicle for expressing something beyond the here and now.  A truly transcendental experience.

                              ~ Bill Binkelman, Wind and Wire
 

A decidedly original and fascinating album.  Coalescence is unique in both its conception and execution....The outcome is a highly spiritual, mystical ambience

   ~ Jeff Johansen (WJCU) New Age Voice

 

Coalescence is unique, sublime, extraordinary and beautiful....The angelic, dream-like presence captured by this recording makes listening to Coalescence an experience that relaxes the mind and body, as it feeds the imagination.

~ M. Jeffrey Schmidt, Massage Magazine

 

 

 

Jim throat singing with Mawwal

 

Jim singing with Paranoise

 

 

 

Godspace

Spectral Spiral Music 4 - 2002 - 73:47

 

1. Astral (subsections: Perseverance,  Rapt Bliss,  &  Wandering through Star Fields)

2. Light Shines In Your Heart  (subsections:   A Wishing Thing,   Pendent Hope,  &  So you know I'm with You)

3. Transformations (subsections:  Thanatos,   Breathing into Life,   &   Deliquescent Being)

 

buy the CD or download Godspace

 

 

...["Astral"] unfolds so gradually in wave after wave of beauty and bliss.  The music is like slowly and effortlessly gliding over a rolling landscape with the glow of soft purple light from a setting sun bathing you and the land below.

...color me impressed, blown-away, and mystified.

                              ~ Bill Binkelman, Wind and Wire

 

        ...some of the most superlative ambient music I've ever heard.  It is a work of staggering beauty and nuance, at once improvisational and composed.

        This disc has such an emotional and spiritual resonance for me; it is as if Cole had tapped into my biorhythms for 74 minutes, occupying my thoughts, and impregnating all activity around me with meaning where before there seemed to be none.

        This is timeless, important music, and I give it my highest recommendation.

                  ~ Brian Bieniowski, The Ambient Review

       

 

 

 

 

Sky
Spectral Spiral Music 2 - 2000 - 57:26

 

1. For the Birds        2. From the Birds        3. Kyrie Eleison

4. Passion    5. Uplifting    6. Spacious Sighs    7. Know Way (Way)

 

buy the CD or download Sky

 

...Spacious, floating, and ethereal, the combined human voices seem to stretch out and envelop everything, blanketing it in a layer of billowy softness.

...That it's human voices making these celestial sounds never fails to astonish me.  

     ~ Bill Binkelman, Wind and Wire

 

... a sound extreme in both beauty and emotional character....Sky will have the listener returning many times, attempting to both re-enter the zone this music puts one in and quantify an immeasurable factor that borders on the mystical.

                  ~ Chuck van Zyl, STAR'S END 

 

 

Jim throat singing with Mawwal

with Paranoise

 

 

 


 

 

 

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