Temple Ritual/Floating Jungle : Live at the Mystic Palace

 

Two other noteworthy releases from the Wave Temples circle appeared on Spotted Locales last year; they navigate the same oceans Wave Temples has already explored and traverse nature paths similar to those of Fluorescent Heights and Lieven Martens (with Dolphins into the Future).

„After a string of acclaimed releases on Not Not Fun and Possible Motive – mysterious Florida musician Wave Temples unveils a new label and private press, Spotted Locales.

The imprint launches with a cassette release from Miami’s Justice A. Gonzalez (‘The Gecko’) and a 7″ & cassette from the Wave Temples-adjacent Live at the Mystic Palace, ‘Temple Ritual/Floating Jungle’.

A longtime member of the Florida underground noise community, Wave Temples has a lengthy discography dedicated to preserving a sonic ethnography of sea-faring cultures, hidden jungle civilizations, and ancient star-maps.

Between 2011 – 2015, they helmed Rainbow Pyramid, a mind-melting label that showcased experimental tapes from the Sunshine State and beyond. Early releases from the artists behind Akasha System and Severed+Said are among the dozens of stellar musicians that have graced the Rainbow Pyramid discography.

The new venture kicks off with Live at the Mystic Palace and the 7-inch/cassette bundle ‘Temple Ritual/Floating Jungle’. As is customary with the label owner, there’s no detail on who’s behind the project, but it’s safe to assume Wave Temples had a hand in its creation.

The set features the artist’s trademark humid ambient with touches of noise experimentation. In the blink of an eye it progresses from gentle tropical exotica to an exploratory fever dream.“

• Inverted Audio -

Odyssey

 

„This is music of forgotten shores, sea air, and saltwater shrines, echoing in shells scattered across the altars of Atlantis“

Last November, I stumbled upon Wave Temples' new EP—which, unlike previous releases, was available only digitally—more or less by chance, and I hoped for a physical release. Well, my hopes have been more than fulfilled: for the past few weeks, the *Odyssey* EP has been available on cassette and 7-inch vinyl.

„The Odyssey EP is a living map, guiding your attention deep into a forgotten landscape...This recording exists somewhere at the intersection of drone, field recordings, and new age...As you listen, you submerge into a realm where civilization has retreated before the force of nature...Do you hear it? The rustle of mangroves, the cries of birds, the lapping of water - a hypnotic dialogue and the call of the sirens...The sound erects ancient temples out of the water itself...This is an Odyssey not so much across the ocean to distant lands, but through time, memory, and resonance toward your own personal Ithaca... " - Amateur Exotic

Owl Island

Hunter P. Thompson leaves his acid/ambient house project Akasha System 

continue to rest and will release his 2nd album as Tegu in 2024.

“Forest Hills” brought sunshine to my personal start to the year.

I would have been only too happy to accompany the tour for the album (together with Wave Temples and others).

But travel expenses and time were disproportionate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT9f_EAB_WU

So now “Owl Island” and with colleagues I admire like Wave Temples and X.Y.R. Hunter P.Thompson brings the smile back to my face, and the lack of sun and temperatures just above 0 degrees suddenly don't matter anymore.

The tracks move between meditative sequences and expectant moments, always permeated by a slightly mystical, mysterious aura. The combination of organic and electronic elements creates a unique atmosphere that is both calming and captivating.

„The second outing by Hunter Thompson’s tribalist dub alias Tegu skews more spectral and simmering, a canopy of cascading keys, hand percussion, and swells of everglades bass: Owl Island. Recorded in early 2024 on the banks of a Floridian canal, the album’s 11 tracks roll in like shifting fog over an ancient marsh, swaying with low end and loops of humid synths.

Across 53 minutes, the music moves between séance and visitation, alternately transient and expectant, bathed in a sheen of starlight and streetlights. Fellow voyagers Wave Temples and X.Y.R. join for a pair of smoky, cosmic cameos, but otherwise this is a solitary affair – locked in, looking up, mapping new constellations in the expanding void.“

• Not Not Fun -

„Tegu, the tribalist dub alias of Hunter Thompson, has released his second album, Owl Island, under the label Not Not Fun. The album, recorded in early 2024 along the banks of a Floridian canal, contains 11 tracks with a total duration of 53 minutes. The music on the album is characterized by layered keyboard patterns, rhythmic hand percussion, and deep bass tones that create an atmosphere reminiscent of the Everglades. The sound is described as both spectral and environmental, evoking a sense of immersion in a natural, yet otherworldly setting.

The album includes contributions from Wave Temples and X.Y.R., who appear on the tracks “2×12” and “2×11,” respectively. Despite these collaborations, the album largely remains a solo endeavor, exploring themes of solitude and introspection. The music transitions between various moods, from séance-like environments to more tense and anticipatory moments, all enveloped in a mix of natural and artificial light.

• retrofuturista -

Coconut Dealers

 

The Coconut Dealers, if we want to believe the release info, and why shouldn't we? -

only steered their ship through tropical waters for 1 - 2 years. That was more than 10 years ago. 

The crew probably only consisted of Konstantin Shkolnikov. Shkolnikov, as captain, boatsmate and cook all rolled into one, followed the same route that Dolphins into the Future, Wave Temples and other adventurers had already taken.

Afterwards, his trail is lost in the vastness of the sea, in the jungle of an unspecified island or just a faceless satellite city of the Russian Federation.

Whatever he left behind, and however it ended up in Not Not Fun's Britt Brown's hands, here comes almost 2 hours of oceanic bliss, 2 hours of support to bring back the memories of your last seaside vacation to refresh.

„Exquisitely woozy ambient wow and flutter from Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov, landing square between the distant gazes of Spencer Clark, Huerco S. and 1991.

Hard to resist, the pull of warmer climes and better days is most beautifully at the core of Coconut Dealers’ gently hallucinatory recordings here. Made sometime around 2011, and issued at the time as digital releases which totally escaped most radars, you can trust the ever reliable NNF to bide their time perfectly with this comprehensive survey and reminder of the project, spanning nearly 2 hours of breezy tropical transportation that will surely do in lieu of holidays for us.

There’s no shortage of this style in circulation, but the amount that’s worth your time is small. ‘Coconut Dealers’ is most certainly worth the dive though, turning an array of found research recordings gifted to the artists by an oceanographer friend, into a lush sort of ethnographic collage where rolling surf laps sloshing keys, waterfall sounds, and flanging tape hiss resembling far away jet planes.

Perhaps unavoidably comparisons should be made with Spencer Clark’s myriad “ethnographic” aliases, but also 1991 cult ‘High-Tech High-Life’ album, which shares much of the Coconut Dealers’ melodic wistfulness and washed out tape textures, just like Huerco S. when he vapourises the beats. Treat your ears to a few hours in the sun, no factor 50 needed.“

Boomkat 

„Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov launched Coconut Dealers in 2011 after being gifted an extensive vault of research recordings by an oceanographer friend. Inspired by their beauty and blankness, he began shaping them into ethnographic collages of rolling surf, sundazed keys, hand drums, tropical waterfalls, and tape hiss, “like notes in the diary of some traveler,” compelled by a compositional muse he describes as “pure visionary.” 

After three self-released digital collections the project ceased activities in 2012. Totaling nearly two hours, this remastered box set presents the entirety of the Coconut Dealers soundsphere, spanning all manner of aquatic and equatorial hallucination: “sunny archipelagos, woeful lagoons in the night, sleepy sand bays of restless waters with no horizon.” This is music of the mind's eye, adrift and ascendent, divined from and for the infinite seas within.“

NNF Release Info on Bandcamp

Isle Enchanted

 A really long, wonderful summer, despite many personal lows this year, was followed by a very nice autumn with temperatures sometimes reaching up to 20 degrees. 

They are days that I would like to spend just in nature, with my face turned to the sun, with big eyes for the colors of the leaves on the trees and always with a little melancholy in my heart. In the reality of everyday life, this often comes to nothing and hours in the forest turn into minutes on the streets between things to do.

A favorite companion on my walks in nature is Fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples. For over 10 years, my heart beats faster whenever a new release is announced.

2022/2023 was a fantastic Wave Temples year, “Panama Shift” was the first release on vinyl, and there were also a few cassette releases on Possible Motive, among others (later in this program). Before that, things had been quiet around Wave Temples for a long time, partly due to some turbulence in his life.

See also the Interview with Inverted Audio:

 

https://inverted-audio.com/mix/wave-temples/

“Isle Enchanted” was released on Britt Brown’s great Not Not Fun label at the end of 2016.

My brother had just passed away a month before & we were out of ours at the end of the year 

Apartment canceled due to personal use. So it will always be the soundtrack of those days. Someone (presumably Britt Brown himself) decided to put "Masterpiece" on the cover. For me it is, but it could also be on most other Wave Temples releases. The album was released on December 16, 2016 and one of my last actions with the old WiFi was to download this album (the tape only came to me later). The next day we put down new roots in a new place.

The album has some wonderful reviews and descriptions that I couldn't describe any better and, as usual, I'm happy to let them speak for themselves.

„The Florida musician who records as Wave Temples—whoever they are—has chosen an apt name for their project. The first thing you hear on Isle Enchanted is the sound of foaming waves, closely followed by a keyboard line that mimics the sound of a tropical pan flute. Enchanted follows a string of similarly coastal LPs—Sleeping Tortugas, In the Shade of the Island—and its primary concern is not having any primary concerns. The two 15-minute compositions that make up the album drift by dreamlike, consisting of little more than ocean sounds and synths that ripple like the aurora borealis. Where his labelmates on the LA-based Not Not Fun bend and distend synths to create distinctly unsettling worlds, Wave Temples is more serene than surreal.

But what makes Isle Enchanted so engrossing is the way Wave Temples uses repeated patterns to hypnotizing effect. Nine minutes into “Part I,” the landscape suddenly shifts from a simple, two-note lullabye to what sounds like digital windchimes caught in a strong breeze. The tight cluster of notes repeats over and over, ocean roaring behind them, neither gaining nor losing strength. The net effect is weirdly calming, the twinkling keyboards becoming as regular and expected as the next heartbeat. “Part II” is even more translucent; the ocean keeps going, but the synth lines sound like they’re being played in a grotto far below. There are no sharp edges to the sounds on Enchanted; everything is low and flutelike. The album ends with a simple, five-note melody plunked out on what sounds like a computerized kettle drum, the space between each note big enough to contain a whole other song. Isle Enchanted doesn’t command attention or dazzle with complexity. It simply invites you to disappear inside of it for a while.“

J. Edward Keyes - Bandcamp/Album of the Day/04.01.17

„Floridian fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples is responsible for a unique flow of opaque tropical hallucinations since 2013, issued via a variety of noted tape boutiques. His latest, Isle Enchanted, maps a mirage coastline of salt haze, cerulean water, and smeared, siren keys. Both sides were tracked across three summer days, inspired by notions of Polynesian paradise and the Māori underworld. Blank blue waves swell and ebb, tones float and fade, textures phase and decay – Isolation Exotica, for castaways abandoned on utopian shores. As personal and poetic an encapsulation of palm tree minimalism as any we’ve heard since …On Sea-Faring Isolation (2009). The more hidden the temple the more sacred the space: “This place to me is what it must have been like to discover the island of Capri or Malta uninhabited since beyond ancient days.” 

Recorded live at Hawaiki, June 20-22, 2016. 

Images sourced by WT. 

Design by Britt Brown.  

Mastered by Alter Echo.

ABANDONED PARADISE

OCEAN AT LOW TIDE

CAVES OF THE GROTTO AQUATICA

SAND LAIN BARE, SHIMMERING NAKED IN THE SUN PAST THE WATCHFUL GUARDIANS

DEEP INSIDE WITH POOLS OF RADIANCE

THIS IS WHERE THE SLEEPING GIANT SLEEPS AND HIS ONE-THOUSAND DREAMS

OF LAPIS SCIMMIA AT THE IVORY RUIN

BENEATH THE SACRED CENOTE AND THE LOST SHRINE OF THE MANY SHELLED TRITONS IN THE SACRED WATER GARDEN OF PRIAPUS AND APHRODITE

A WIND QUIXOTIC

On Sea-Faring Isolation

 

European Election 2024.

& Sunday Service. Today with Lieven Martens Moana.

It's been about 10 years since I discovered Lieven Martens' music.

At a time when the climax of his project Dolphins into the Future had been reached and all the concerts had already been played. The band had packed up and moved on, you could say. Of course this is nonsense for a laptop based project. Afterwards he continued to make music and sounds under the many of his pseudonyms, but without achieving the presence of the dolphins for me.

Hmmm. I can't even properly express what this music meant to me and what it triggered in me and how important it has become to me since then. That was just something completely new. In addition to well-produced music, with crystal-clear sound, with well-balanced highs and lows (albeit more lows), I've always had a soft spot for lo-fi sound ala Lou Barlow's Sentridoh or the early Folk 'Implosion.

This was somehow lo-fi, electronic, and yet completely deep and took me away to far-flung atolls and deep rainforests. Together with the oceanic meditations of Wave Temples, Hybrid Palms, Vladimir Karpow's X.Y.R., Fluorescent Heights, Magnetophonique, Les Halles, Monte, Komodo Haunts and so on, I found myself in a completely new musical world. When you hear the word Lo-Fi, many people will probably wave you off, but perhaps this term doesn't do this music justice, just as many terms tend to lead nowhere. I felt comfortable here, but it was difficult for me to get out of the water or leave the tropical rainforests again.

“…on Sea-Faring Isolation” was released in 2009 by Britt Brown’s Great Not Not Fun & is Lieven Martens masterpiece for me and contains two killer tracks, “Lone Voyager” & “Memory of Self”, which always really get me and which are always played on repeat. Time for a new experience? Let's go!

Dolphins Into The Future 

„... On Sea-Faring Isolation"

On The High Seas (06'43")

Lone Voyager (08'36")

Onset ~ Beyond Clouds (02'34") *

Memory Of Self (07'05) **

Lapse ~ Dream (05'40")

Aftermath ~ Isle Of Self (05'21")

All sounds and music by L.R.J. Martens.

Recorded in isolation by automatic writing at the Cetacean Nation Studios, Nowemapa ~ Kekemapa 2008.

•   Outtake from a radio play, aired Inuali 2008 during the programme Tyfustijd on Radio Centraal.
• * Originally created for Bolderplaats, a theatre play written and performed by Wietske Van Gils.

This long playing record was originally created as a tribute to the Seafaring Isolation writings of Cetacean Nation founder John Cunningham Lilly M.D., in which he describes the case of lone ocean dwellers past - future ~ present. What happens when an isolated mind roams around the oceanic world by itself, only surrounded by this vast system of overwhelming natural elements? Its ego-entity lodged in a non-human framework. Its human biocomputer committed to process all the ones and zeros in the framework of a giant Seven Waves Octave four-dimensional isolation tank.

At Gaia's Pond, the Oceanic Octave is the only comprehendible code-system up in the ether. All reproduced input digits energise through ocean, through sky, through sun, through wind, through clouds, through rain, through various ocean inhabitants. Thus creating myths through these elements. Everything is, coloured by strict human solitude, writing a new script. Your Dreamtime in this realm is one that radiates by a nonhuman current. Pushing your mind to create a whole different story. A creative ego puzzle with its new truth and reality. An ecstatic truth which could be frightening couid be bliss. A hallucination which might be closer to reality than our own waking-sleep visions of the specific "now".

This Dreamtime of solitude, is the myth of the Seven Waves Octave.

This album is a linear story.

Revealing the Dreamtime from its departure.

Materialising the onset ~ lapse ~ aftermath of the actual thought (de)construction.

As being the aural registration of an alien myth conceived by a human source and consciousness, filtered through the Seven Waves Octave.

As being an evocation of the ocean that is your yetzer ha-_ov, your lover, your mother, your god, your center.

AH! AH! AH!

This is a Cetacean Nation Communication, Nowemapa 2010.

Produced by Not Not Fun Records, Los Angeles, USA. This is a second edition of 300 copies.

Vinyl label drawing by Jessie Schietecatte.

„Timely digital reissue of Dolphins Into The Future's sublime 2009 NNF release. The man also known as Cetacean Nation Institute For Environmental Sounds, Wildlife Tapes Portal Jams, or Lieven Martens to his friends, pillow dives into a semi-conscious ocean of improvised New Age loops, field recordings and pitch-refracted, Riley-esque synthline wanderings, webbed-fingers navigating the way across the keys. Like a saltier Monopoly Star Child Searcher or JD Emmanuel shored on a pacific desert island 'On Sea-Faring Isolation' plays through nonstop with a delightful mystery and dawning narrative with a quiet, serene contentment and enough humour to keep it buoyant. Highly recommended." (Boomkat)

"Returning to the shore returns us to the sure, allowing us to fit this Dolphins Into The Future release into a sonic context that includes Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds (and in particular John Elliott’s Imaginary Softwoods project), Brian Eno (connections nautical and ambient), and the nature recordings of Chris Watson. Martens’ work exists in a world that has all these in it, but it sets itself apart with its insistence on the possibility of “cetacean trance” and its commitment to the life aquatic. Well worth a lengthy immersion." (Tiny Mix Tapes)