BETAGEIST is progressive instrumental electronica infused with ambient, prog, cinematic, and psychedelic elements - music produced entirely by humans, reaching for the beauty in being.
WHAT’S NEW
ARIA has arrived! Hoping this new ambient progressive track can be a solid 10-minute addition to your deep-listening playlists for the dark months.
The backstory is the dawn of consciousness, which began as vivid hallucinations of ghosts or gods (very clear in the global cultural record) and progressed to the sort of subjective virtual reality that adults take for granted today. But this evolution meant a terrible, irreplaceable loss - the inner dialogue which had served so long as a sense of comfort and purpose - became a lonely monologue, heralding the dawn of prayer and modern spirituality. There’s something universally tender about the notion that we once had this ghostly companion with us at all times and then she just disappeared, like the death of our collective twin, and we have ever since mourned so longingly for her return through the vast, colorful spectrum of prayer in all its countless forms. And in this track, her name is Aria.
A new single Our Collapse is a Sanctuary has arrived! This is another track in my now-familiar-yet-still-unusual style of “ambient progressive electronic post-rock” and again it’s a long one - not intentionally so, they just come out that way (can 9 minutes even be considered a single?) Still looking at a full album release late in 2024, including some reasonable-length tracks.
Trying to convey a story of beauty, tragedy and mystery in one track takes time. This instrumental tangle of styles maintains a manageable complexity and the usual blend of synthetic and organic elements.
The first release of 2024 is at long last released! The new track is an 8-minute synthesis of ambient, post-rock, prog, and cinematic styles, and has a *huge* sound - kind of a cornerstone piece, an atypical way to debut a new album cycle and certainly not the express lane to mass popularity...but it's very much a perfect representation of the kind of sound I am always pursuing. Listen to it here
At long last, "Luminous Exile" is here! This album is the culmination of *so much* I don't even know where to begin except to say THANK YOU for listening and connecting in this way. Finding receptive minds is incredibly difficult for this type of music - it doesn't fit neatly into any genre and maybe that's part of the reason I needed to make it: too energetic to be ambient, too electronic for post-rock, too ethereal for prog, too structured for psychedelia, too dark for new age, too heavy for chillout. It’s unpeggable!
The title really comes from a fascination with self-awareness and how incredible and fantastically rare it must be in the universe. And it’s not just a gift - it’s a gift and a burden. When we look to the heavens we can feel at once a primitive fascination and overwhelming sense of vastness and insignificance - but this loneliness is irrational because we have each other - we have *so much* to embrace…
"Blue Shift" is the lead single on the new album and it's full of warm blue sky and ocean energy. A lot of the new album gets deep into existential and melancholic vibes so it was important to lead things off in a positive way that firmly embraces the extraordinary world we have.
The full video for "Ever" is now live - packed with existential imagery, metaphors and motifs, flashbacks, a cathartic journey to the sea, and an ending open to interpretation - all in 5 minutes! It’s a very familiar human story of rising from dark places and discovering meaning through connections to the past.
“Together” is an epic, emotional 8-minute ride inspired by waking from one of those stunningly realistic dreams about being reunited with a loved one who has passed - ghostly and melancholic on one hand, profound and energizing on the other - and hopefully reflected that way in the eerie guitar and synth textures. A rare track that just poured out and basically wrote itself. Direct influences include David Helpling, Mike Oldfield, Ulrich Schnauss, Erik Wøllo, and Carbon Based Lifeforms.
The full video for Outlier One is now live! If there were ever a track I’ve produced that was meant for video, this is it. The concept is that self-aware life is an extraordinary anomaly in the visible universe- and despite our relentless combing through data for signs, we are probably the miracle we’re looking for. WE are the Outliers.
For the video I wanted to show just how fascinating and frankly terrifying the idea of self-aware life is - what would it be like to observe our own species on earth as an outsider? Or to crudely assemble TV broadcast signals that have traveled from earth for light years? In the end, though, we can find simple meaning to our existence, and it’s not at all terrifying.