Mendel Kaelen – Fertile Voids – Ambientblog
MENDEL KAELEN – FERTILE VOIDS
Dutch composer Mendel Kaelen (currently living and working in the UK) released three albums between 2010 and 2012. Two of these were featured on Ambientblog (so you can catch up if you want): Remembering What Was Forgotten and The Tragedy That Drowned Itself. After that, he focused on other important things.
Looking back now, Kaelen has a very interesting biography: he studied and became a neuroscientist with expertise in the use of music and/or psychedelics (like LSD) in (psycho-)therapy. He completed his PhD in Neuroscience at Imperial College London in 2017.
One of the remarkable projects that came from his research is Wavepaths – a website aimed at therapists who want to use music in their therapeutic treatments. I remember that Mendel and I talked about using ambient music (like the ambientblog mixes) in therapy, which would, of course, be hardly impossible because of the royalties involved. But Kaelen did not stop there: Wavepaths grew into a large-scale site offering not only information for professionals, but also a lot of music specifically created for this purpose, by artists we know so well. A few names of the Wavepaths participants: Abul Mogard, Andrea Belfi, Christina Vantzou, Galya Bisengalieva, Greg Haines, Brian Eno, and Jon Hopkins.
The Wavepaths site is aimed at psychotherapists, so not for the general public, but if you want to have an idea of how this music-for-therapy may sound, you may (re-)listen to Jon Hopkins’ Music For Psychedelic Therapy (2021).
Or: listen to Fertile Voids – Mendel Kaelen‘s first music release in 13 years!
“Inside each of us are dimensions that never found words or thoughts. Places devoid of form and absent of movement. Empty, yet vast and charged with potential.”
I guess it will be hard to find music more immersive than this. If you need a reference, I’d say this sound comes close to that of Thomas Köner’s work.
The 60-minute piece is created entirely by using only sound recordings of stone and sand. But you won’t recognise the details as such. It’s somewhat hard to describe the music because it is very slow-moving, but it is not a ‘drone’. It’s a ‘sound’ that slowly grows to become all-encompassing – almost like an entity itself.
Fertile Void – which is mastered by none other than Francisco Lopez – is ‘created for attentive, quiet listening, late at night and in a dark room.’
If you listen at a relatively low volume, nothing seems to happen in the first minute(s). The sound slowly takes shape, literally as if it’s coming out of a void. A fertile void indeed, because the sound slowly grows richer and fuller, surrounding you more and more, while at times retreating to a softer volume.
Only after 37 minutes, in the second half of the composition, a low rumble is suddenly introduced – like the beating of enormous drums or a huge Japanese O-Daiko. (Forget you PC-speakers, be sure to listen on a good hi-fi system). It marks the beginning of the more intense part of the composition. But don’t worry: it ends as quietly and peacefully as it began.
Because I know that some of you still prefer the tangible, it saddens me somewhat to say that, unlike the earlier albums, Fertile Void is a digital-only release this time.
Side note: More background information about Mendel Kaelen can be found on his Substack site, Waves Of Being.
How about a free download?
Mendel Kaelen kindly offers five download codes for Fertile Voids. If you want a chance to receive one of these, simply leave a comment under this post.
Entries close exactly one week after the publication of this post (Monday, Oct 6, 09:30), and the winners will be chosen randomly.
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