6 years ago Natasha Home aka Sunmoonstar went on a small European tour and exactly 6 years ago today played a living room concert in Berlin's “o Tannenbaum”. In 2018 I was still driving and so in the summer temperatures in the evening I went looking for Berlin's smallest bar (?) and a parking lot nearby. Berlin. Big city. You know?
Arrived, nothing missed yet, nothing happened yet. Everything very intimate. First a beer.
Send a message to them in Messenger. “I’m here.” I'm a little nervous, but of course Natasha is wonderfully relaxed and very, very nice & cool. She finds a little time before the set.
Back then, Natasha played three very different shows in Berlin, and I was only able to attend this one. A shared set, a wonderful New Age improvisation together with Galya Chikiss, Eva Geist, Mutya Macatumpag and Jessica Tucker.
Living room atmosphere, intense, very close to the musicians & to the music.
Afterwards we share a beer together. She actually comes from Australia, but lives in North Carolina/USA at the time of the tour. She herself once described her music as ambient rainforesty space music. Listen to the 25 minute “Rainbow Springs” from the album of the same name and you’ll know what’s meant. Together with “The Great Barrier Reef”, these two albums are my favorites of hers, to which you can and want to return again and again, without getting bored, without it not triggering anything, without it not relaxing. As a young person, I hated New Age, or at least what New Age was available and known to me at the time. At my age, you open the windows, lay out the ISO mat, light the incense candles and look into the distance.
“The textures, colors, and scents of a soft landscape.” And gosh, Natasha Home ain’t kidding. Home’s music as Sunmoonstar blooms in the sunlight filtering through forest leaves, becoming part of the mind’s ecosystem and expelling psychic oxygen back to us to perpetuate the life cycle. Rainbow Springs is graceful and uncomplicated, appealing to all senses without prejudice: it’s equally a light source, a temperate locale, a spring day, an ocean breeze. I don’t know what it tastes like (and I am not putting the tape in my mouth), but I’m sure it’s gentle and sweet on the tongue. The fact that it extends so far beyond the auditory cortex and envelops one so cleanly and completely makes it a natural fit for Oakland’s Inner Islands, a label focused on personal well-being and internal health.
It’s not hard to lose yourself in the world of Rainbow Springs, and the 25-minute title track taking up the entirety of side B even includes birdsong to wrap it up, just in case you’ve forgotten to marvel at the beauty of the outdoor world. Is Rainbow Springs an escape for Home too, a portal out of the college town environment of Gainesville, Florida, and into the fantasy world behind her eyelids? Or is she simply finding inspiration wherever it appears? Can this heavenly balm erase the tension of modern life? Possibly, probably, and definitely: its aesthetic mirrors that of Home’s label Elestial Sound, the “celestial” quality of the music losing its “c” and descending to Earth with the full intent of healing. And heal it does, curing the weary or troubled mind.“
-Tiny Mix Tape-
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