Mathias Grassow + Jim Cole Leland Burr
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.
|
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!
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. |
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. |
Coalescence
Spectral
Spiral Music 1 - 1997 - 73:13
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
Jim throat singing with Mawwal
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
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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)
...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. |
Jim throat singing with Mawwal
Gathering
Room Spectral
Voices' Story