"Mastery Quantum Sound deftly treads that middle ground between immersive soundscapes and forward thinking electronic experimentation, for a truly immersive and absorbing listen."
A strangely quiet fabric, with no queue round the corner, no airport security, and no thumping brick walls shaking from the systems in room one, two and three, was the fabric that greeted me on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. Which was apt, the gig I was there to see wouldn’t be packing the place to the rafters, it would be an exercise in deep listening and stillness – and it was a Tuesday afternoon.
I was there to witness the Quantum Sound Listening Experience, a 71 minute live mix from Hannah Holland of the Mastery Quantum Sound LP, the physical incarnation of the Quantum Sound project, and to see what happened to my brain as I listened.
Mastery is a project that explores the potentialities of music in the wellness sphere, covered in depth in this article. The Quantum Sound Listening Experience was an opportunity to both hear the album in full, undistracted on a world-class sound system, and also to take part in a study conducted by Oliver Durcan of Goldsmith’s. The study utilises the event as a chance to track the altered states of individuals as they listen to music.
So it was this collision of worlds that led to me and four other participants having cloth caps with plug attached, fitted to our heads in a space above the main bar. A first for me, having never seen the electric impulses given off by my grey matter rendered on a screen before.
With EEG machine duly hooked up, we were led to room one and to a yoga mat, pillow and eye mask, for what was definitely the most civilised setup I had personally seen the space adopt. 30 guests or so, prone and bathed in red light as trains went rumbling overhead, the atmosphere was incredibly relaxed despite the rather natty caps fixed to our skulls. They were clearly using some posh incense.
Eye mask applied and horizontal axis acquired, it’s finally time to talk about the music itself. The performance began with an introduction that helped the crowd adopt to still, calm manner in which the performance was designed to be experienced, before Hannah Holland begins the mix.
We open on a collaborative track from Cherub Sanson, Tim Wheater and Rommek entitled Bliss Code – 000. A heady combination of harp glissandro, barely perceptible gongs and soft synth and dronework opens the track, before flutes and gently ringing crystal bowls and bells opened the door to sleep. A door which, in all honesty, I almost stepped through in the opening few minutes.
Particularly rousing however is the turn the track makes towards a more brooding atmosphere, as low-end frequencies reverberate heavily through the room and body, and the newly installed kinetic dancefloor pulses along to the rhythm.
Newly revived and attentive, the mix wormed its way through the lightly wavering synth work and reverb soaked guitar strings of Hannah Holland’s Ambient Chronolight, the playful and fractured colours of Djrum’s Come Find Me, and the unmistakable sound of Alessandro Cortini’s dramatic dronework in his track IV.
Wata Igarashi’s 15 minute epic Minerals was one of the tracks released prior to the full album, and so the arrival of those golden, looping arps, circling each other in harmony as light tension builds and finds its release in warm, enveloping low end hums, was a gorgeously welcome halfway marker.
The mix shifted onwards into the bassy pulses and distant, haunting piano-like notes of Red World, a melancholic track made in the unmistakable tone of a producer that founder of the project Bianca Mayhew says “we absolutely could not do a Quantum Sound album without”, but shall for now remain only Silent Servant.
Here, Cherub Sanson and Tim Wheater make a return on Stillpoint, more lush chord progressions with live bells and chimes accompanying the airy soundscape, before the glitchy pops, field recordings and stately washes of pads take over on Manami’s Sown.
Jennifer Loveless’s If You Let It is an exercise in shimmering synth work and wistful guitar sampling, adopting a slightly more uplifting tone and slowly settling like a long exhalation. The mix and the album begin to come to an end first with the beautiful piano number Dark Angel by Ruthlss, which opens with a simple, single note melody steeped in wistful melancholia, before another cathartic release allows the notes to flow freely across the rest of the track.
Hannah Holland then brings the show to a close on her own track, A Door To Who Knows, another lush soundscape replete with low, strumming guitar and gently washing pads that recede into silence. An announcement helps the audience return to the room in a manner anyone familiar with Shavasana would recognise, and the experience comes to an end.
An hour of remaining attentive to and completely immersed in a musical performance, with virtually no other stimuli – no phone, no socialising, no drinking, not even any vision – is an interesting one. It’s not often you’re asked to do exactly nothing for that kind of duration. After initial drowsiness, my own personal experience was one of fluctuations between states where I allowed my mind to wander to all manner of corners (which I will keep to myself, thank you) – to deep immersion in the music and the experience.
Common of both of these states was that it was a deeply introspective mood, it took approximately 2.5 seconds to feel like the only person in the room. It is hard to totally disregard the knowledge that you are being measured in a situation like this. “Am I ‘performing’ in a way that’s useful for the study?”, “am I relaxed enough?”, “am I attentive enough?” are just a couple of the questions that my mind unhelpfully shouted at me as the experience took place.
But as time passed and the music took over, time seemed to fly past. Mastery Quantum Sound deftly treads that middle ground between immersive soundscapes and forward thinking electronic experimentation, for a truly immersive and absorbing listen. These are the kinds of sounds that will, undoubtedly in my mind, have left the readout on the EEG displaying the words ‘catatonic bliss’. If such a setting exists.
Master Quantum Sound is out 12 February via Houndstooth. Buy a vinyl copy from Inverted Audio Record Store and digital from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
A1. Jon Hopkins – Embodiment Breathing (With Fearne Cotton)
B1. Cherub Sanson, Tim Wheater, Rommek – Bliss Code 00
B2. Hannah Holland – Ambient Chronolight 1
B3. Djrum – Come Find Me
C1. Alessandro Cortini – IV
C2. Wata Igarashi – Mineral
C3. Silent Shadow – Red World
D1. Cherub Sansom & Tim Wheater – Stillpoint
D2. Manami – Sown
D3. Jennifer Loveless – If You Let It
D4. Ruthlss – Dark Angel
D5. Hannah Holland – A Door to Who Knows
