Sister Waize - 2011 - A Dawning of Wonder

Quality: 4.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5

I'm still not sure where this feller ends up calling himself a sister, but y'know, I'm down with a feminist angle and such.  Maybe the music is a nun's fever dream - with the secret psychedelic sacrament or something.  Although the first work I heard from him was the halycon vibe of a 16-bit video game, the more recent work is triumphantly drifting through a drone vortex.  The sister himself describes the music as folding drone.  I don't really know what that means, but it does spur on the hallucinations.  Sister Waize's instructions state that this music is not intended to be listened to as a giant block, but rather one at a time.  If you're hardcore, though, strap a pair of clamshell earphones upon your head in a darkened room and let the geometric patterns piece into your cortex upon the void of darkness.

As I said with the "Realignment" series, we're not dealing with tunes here, but experiences.  The opening track, "Side Time Down," does plunge into the depths, with calming but dark visions taking you there.  For the afternoon explorer, "A Tome for the Boneless" perhaps provides a more pleasing drone, plunging you mind into a pool of liquid nitrogen.  Still, you've got to earn the wonder than the album title suggests.  The two sides are fused in "Dark Mountain Crown," with the industrial grit becoming more and more apparent as the title progresses.

Really, I'm not quite sure what to say in the presence of such etheral music.  I've just tossed a few drinks down and let the impressionistic writing take over.  This is music of the subconscious.  Those devout mind explorers and meditational explorers will take flight here, but there's not even a hint of the mainstream peeking through here.  It's your graduate thesis in the heart of trippiness.

Your voyage starts here:
Sister Waize - 2011 - A Dawning of Wonder