RGMS End of Year Retrospective: 2022

Steeped in a landscape of festive imagery, wondering what lies beneath these seemingly contemporary symbols. Just a glance behind the veil and one finds an endless river of lore traversing the depths of history, winding laterally across cultures of all origins...

In plain sight, dangling o’er the mistletoe, an unassuming Nisse guards against misfortune. The scene abounds with lights, wreaths, poinsettias, reindeer and more, inside and outside the halls decked galore. Green, red, white abound dominating the color spectrum, signaling the season where change, hibernation, and reflection coincide. Curiously, we may see a reddish mushroom adorned with whitish dots, a shamanic symbol and catalyst of the shadow’s season greetings. All of this and more surround the central figures, jolly ole Saint Nick and his Christmas fir tree. These symbols coalesce, swirling in the mind’s eye where the unconscious waters roar to bring the season of death and renewal with all its offspring to the soul’s receding shore. It may come as a surprise, that in this exploration lies a thrilling examination of who we are and where we came from. While these answers may be altogether unknowable, the path is there - not to it, but towards it, and on that path the greater truth is to be gleaned - that of your own being. 

This year in RGMS like the dawning winter now, is and has been sparse. Yet, let not the reign of quantity fool you, nor linearity deceive - it is the depths we hope to dive into. This year saw the realization of a slow gradual transformation - an album from a prior winter solstice alchemized into a ritual performance. Under the banner of the new series co-founded by RGMS dubbed Altered States, the album RGMS-006 Morning Bells was transfigured to unfold within an inspired trance induction ceremony. Furthermore, the release of podcast number 4, ‘Music as the Dialectical Synthesis’ wrapped up an intellectual conquest of RGMS’ voyage into the metaphysical landscape. From there, intuitive implementations now percolate, waiting for when the moment is ripe. Pure tones and sine waves cleansed the air of the collective’s path and with the release of MOSS Vol. II the true north of RGMS revealed itself evermore. And with that new direction, questions crackle amidst the yuletide fires. Answers elusive as the flame, but bright as the great star in the sky are there but lay dormant in the winter of their existence. Albums do sit on the shelf, but no justice would be done to them without the direction of the path fully formed. In its emergence we place our faith, one not without reason, but a knowing. Just as one knows the spring will return, but perseveres through the hardships of winter’s throne, yet does so with some unbounded conviction - for as the saying goes “we are twice armed if we fight with faith”

RGMS Works in 2022 -

MUSIC RELEASES
[RGMS-012] MOSS Vol. II (0,0)

PODCASTS
EP#4 - Music as the Dialectical Synthesis

LIVE SESSIONS
Altered States: RGMS-006 Morning Bells

Altered States: RGMS-006 Morning Bells LIVE

ALTERED STATES Vol. II

 December 10, 2022

RGMS presents a live installment of 'Morning Bells' adapted for the new series 'Altered States'. In collaboration with Island Ayurveda, this series makes use of immersive guided breath-work and sound healing modalities to induce altered states of consciousness or trance states in participants. 

This live session strives to ground participants into a deep theta altered state in order to tap into the root centre for the coming winter season. May the sound of the bells serve to awaken and initiate your soul on this journey to confront the shadow of the darkness in winter. There, we hope you may find a new transcendence, transfigured until the light of spring returns.

Music as the Dialectical Synthesis - Ep. 4

The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast: Episode Four

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The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast presents Episode 4: Music as the Dialectical Synthesis, in a series of explorations into music and its relationship to meaning. 

Sean Kiley and Ben Kinsinger discuss music as the dialectical synthesis between the archetypal energies of Soul and Spirit in the context of transpersonal psychology. This episode is a continued exegesis into the RGMS publication The Way of Apollo and Dionysus in the RGMS.

Meditation Objects, Supplements, and Sequences (MOSS) Vol. II [RGMS-012]

RGMS-012

Released January 17, 2022

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Musings: Somewhere in between background noise and a symphony, in between the ocean and your open vein… an object, or new furniture of sorts – a supplement, which opens the room for the breeze to come in – a sequence, guiding you through new land. Straddling the four cardinal directions, earthly meditations, to dive deep into the waters of the unconscious, in search of the eternal flame, glowing like a scarlet lotus on the ocean’s floor, oh to breathe in the depths through consummated eucharist in harmony with the logos. Moss, the great mother, welcomes us unto it to soothe our wounds, then gently guide us back towards the path. Here we are, taking a moment to lay in its bed, amidst a journey which fractures into ten thousand directions, spiraling always towards the mandate of the heart. 

Meditation Objects, Supplements, and Sequences or MOSS, is a curated collaborative album from members of rgms consisting of tracks designed for meditation. This album was inspired in response to the seemingly rather monotonous tone of most meditation music found online today. Here, the aim is to explore a wide variety of states of being possible within the meditative posture. Herein, we have tracks, which lilt us in a gentle state of at onement, others which guide us through strange lands and circular quests, yet others still which take us to that part of ourselves we have not visited in a while, and while our initial urge may be to resist, the vibrations coax us to stay and have a look around for a little while, until we might find this once unfavorable place not at all too unbecoming.

Tracklist: 

MOSS #9: Subversion of Feedback (Aaron Stearns)

MOSS #10: Morning Walk (Chris Chraca)

MOSS #11: Säännös (Timo Pehkonen)

MOSS #12: A Cloudless Rain (Davis Connors)

MOSS #13: The Anchor Dragged Across the Sand (Noah Rosa) 

MOSS #14: A Blue Fire (Iminah Kani)

MOSS #15: Ousers (Dexter Dine)

MOSS #16: A Mercurial Liminality (Sean Kiley) 

MOSS #17: are we not on less, concrete shores? (James Layton)

MOSS #18: Dying Fly (Sampson Hollander)

MOSS #19: In the Backwoods on a Cool Summer Day (Natalie Dzbik)

MOSS #20: Streaming from a Hollow Top (Ben Kinsinger)

MOSS will be an ongoing series, which aims at exploring the breadth of meditative experiences possible within sonic environments. Volume I explored a more atomized realm produced by 8 members of rgms. This volume served as an opportunity for the artist to begin to articulate their own personal musical language of meditation. Here, with Volume II rgms strives towards developing a cohesive whole, in lieu of the individual ca. 10-12 minute experiences produced for Volume I. Volume II is a sonic journey from Human Sounds - anything man-made (machinery, bodily, cars, tools, breath, speaking ((non-communicative), etc.)) to Non-Human Sounds - anything in nature, which takes place without the influence of humans (ocean, river, birds, wind, trees, etc.) This journey then from Human Sounds to Non-Human Sounds takes place over the course of the whole album.

RGMS End of Year Retrospective: 2021

There’s something special in the end of the year, marked first by the winter solstice. Each passing year it grows more dear, with a deeper connection to the past.

Striving to understand this sentiment, even though it evades definition and explanation, I tend to think of what this season meant to our ancestors. There was a serious reverence for the season – after all, life was not guaranteed. Life was tough, and winter tougher. Death was a possibility.

RGMS 2021 End of Year Retrospective Playlist

Community strengthened in feast and spirit wasn’t simply for fun. These rituals, while religious, were deliberate and focused on survival. There was an importance of sustaining through the worst - from the passing of one year, to the rebirth of the next. A transitory period adorned in myth. This kind of survival, however, was not merely a clinging to life as we may think of the word today, for the etymology reveals it was rather a celebration of ‘supervivere’ or ‘super-life’. Thus, survival was a form of venerating not only life, but the gods and goddesses, and the prima materia, which made life possible and allowed to the potential of life beyond sheer being.

The days were soon to get longer, but winter – cold and snow – would continue for months to come. Celebration was in order, but was constrained by the bounds of this unforgiving winter…best to not venture too far away from home, especially during the brutal winter night, when one could be whisked away by the wild hunt.

Today we seem to take such past experiences for granted, yet this deep spiritual yearning persists. Old myths are co-opted by modern culture, but not acutely understood.

The myths surround us. RGMS aims to understand this modern world, the ancient past, and the synthesis of new mythology to come, asking how we may breathe new life into the experiences of being through ritual, through sound, and through the sowing of such deeper understanding. The opportunities are endless, a search for meaning lasting a lifetime – RGMS enters its second year end retrospective making sense of these unconscious artifacts. Year after year, layer after layer, we look forward to what is revealed.


RGMS presents a collection of 2021 works apart of our Year End Retrospective:

RGMS Works in 2021 - 

MUSIC RELEASES

[RGMS-008] these memories are not my own, they're borrowed from my past (-2,-1)

[RGMS-009] Music for Sine Waves II (-2,2)

[RGMS-010] Solétudes (1, 2)

[RGMS-011] Sine Wave EXP No. 1 (-2, 3)



PODCASTS

EP#1 - The Meaning Behind RGMS

EP#2 - Empiricism of Music

EP#3 - Mythology in the RGMS



RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

5. The Way of Apollo and Dionysus in the RGMS

6. Archetypes of Music

7. 'Morning Bells' Reviewed by TVC

8. Towards More Objective Translations for a Non-Synesthesiac: Light to Sound

9. Ritual Engagement with Music

OTHER POSTS

Symbolism and the Cathedral (Newsletter #1)

-- 

Ritual Engagement with Music

Music and ritual have long been intertwined on that same golden thread of transcendence running all throughout time. Their dynamic is eternal, but our perception of their interconnectivity ebbs and flows, consciously or unconsciously navigating the space of their association. 

Here, in Ritual Engagement with Music RGMS proposes a revitalization of our efforts to heighten the depths of experience by devising and excavating ways to bring the conscious participation of these two domains into an alchemical marriage.

 Read the Full Research Publication: Ritual Engagement with Music 

Sine Wave Experiment No. 1 [RGMS-011]

RGMS-011

Released November 5, 2021

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Musings:

Here, prima materia crossing over

From quantum into material 

Perception preceding experience 

Translations between realms, improvised into existence 

Cerebral electric signals - from nothing, a Vision

A mystery, represented in bits 

Sine Wave EXP No. 1

"Untitled #1" Composed by Davis Connors

"Untitled #2" Composed by Sean Kiley

See the companion research publication: 

Towards More Objective Translations for a Non-Synesthesiac: Light to sound

Promo: Sine Wave EXP No. 1

Symbolism and the Cathedral (Newsletter #1)

    Introducing the RGMS Email Newsletter. Subscribe to our Mailing List for exclusive content:

St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC
(Interior)

    On 5th Avenue in downtown New York, there’s an awe-inspiring Cathedral by the name of St. Patrick’s. Upon entering one is immersed into a realm of breathtaking beauty beneath the Gothic spires and radiant sunbeams shining through the adorned stained glass windows. In the ‘Power of Myth’ Joseph Campbell speaks about the experience of arriving to this place of worship and being stricken with a sense of timeless transcendence, yet, the moment one walks out the door, thrust into the busy, relentless aura of the city, this feeling of transcendence or wonder seems to all but completely evaporate. The question he asks, and that which we in the RGMS continue to ask ourselves today, is how does one take that experience from within the Cathedral, and carry it with them out to the world of everyday experience? It is not a turning away from the intensity of the city and running back into the Cathedral, but rather cultivating an ability to see the transcendence of the Cathedral within the seemingly chaotic and random environment of the mundane. Traditionally, religious practitioners have relied on prayer and mantra to transport their mind and soul back to these moments of awe and wonder when engaging in worship or faced with a difficulty. While these prayers and mantras have power, to some they may feel out of date or rather impersonal, perhaps even limited outside of a monastic practice; and furthermore, there are always new methods to explore and build upon in this experience. 

   

    Therefore, for those of us who wish to see the Cathedral in all experience or “To see a world in a grain of sand / Heaven in a wildflower / To hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour” as William Blake puts it, we are called upon to revitalize and develop new methods of entering back into this state of timeless transcendence. In Meditation Objects, Supplements, and Sequences, the repurposed recordings from nature placed in a context of a contemplative art may take us back to the Cathedral which was manifest in our experience of the sublimity of mother earth in the moments those soundbites were captured. The pieces of music that hold and display these awe-inspiring moments, may act as the scaffolding, which we can climb and wield to build the Cathedral within our own minds. Cultivating such methods or heuristics, which may act as a scaffolding to arrive at that state of wonder is at the very core of RGMS. By advancing a personal and collective symbolic language through which we can reflect on our own music, the work of others, and our experience, we can create pathways that continually guide us back into the halls of the Cathedral to achieve a vision of the timeless transcendence in all things. 

  

  The richness of a piece of music, and symbolic interpretation is truly in its dynamic nature. It affords us not merely one singular objective analysis or perspective, but rather an infinite possibility of deeper meanings arrived at through the intermingling of the personal psyche and the essence of the art, experience, or event. These symbolic meanings need not have any objective significance, by virtue of their ability to confer a benefit to the understanding of oneself in a greater context, instill deeper meaning, and illumen a sense of awe-inspiring wonder, they are the spirit of all that is good and beautiful in this world. They speak to us from a realm beyond ‘this’ and ‘that’ and welcome all to see. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral
(Exterior)

    To better understand the benefit in cultivating this symbolic language, let us take the example of the Buddhist monk, who in an interview after the destruction of his monastery by the Chinese Communist Party was asked how he felt about the situation. His response, while rather surprising to the interviewer, perfectly illustrates the understanding of symbolism the RGMS strives to promote. Despite the seemingly unprovoked nature of this cruelty on the part of the Chinese, this Buddhist monk expressed no anger or condemnation of such actions; rather, he conveyed an enlightened understanding for the actions of the Chinese as part of a greater structural unfolding underlying the way of the world. This response articulates a true understanding of the symbolic nature of events; instead of lamenting about the suffering clearly brought about by the experience, the monk chose to view the occurrence through a greater cosmic perspective, one which understands the impermanence of all things and the alchemical dynamics of the universe. From this perspective we might perhaps see that the Chinese invasion, while devastating in a material sense, sparked an awareness in the collective consciousness of the beauty inherent in the Tibetan Buddhist practice. Not that this awareness didn’t exist before, but through the resulting rallying cry to ‘Free Tibet’, many people who may not have encountered or engaged in this culture now were presented with an impetus to explore more deeply. Thus, seen in a greater context, this event catalyzed the integration of Tibetan ideas of the cosmos into the minds of many non-practitioners and Westerners, who might not have delved otherwise. 

   

    This symbolic perspective is, however, not limited to greater collective events, but may be applied even to the most mundane of experience. It is the lens of understanding found in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which we now strive to sow into all happenings of being. In a more microcosmic sense, allow me to illustrate a personal example of the power of this symbolic mindset. In my journey across the great North American continent to commence studies on an island off the coast of Western Canada, just before crossing the border from the United States side, I stopped in Seattle to visit a friend. While there, my car, which contained all of my belongings, was broken into. Strangely, almost all of my valuables and numerous instruments therein were undisturbed, rather the transgressors opted to plunder only the suitcases, which contained my wardrobe. Rightfully so, I could have become enraged by this injustice, especially after having come so close to my destination on such a journey, however, this emotional perspective, while completely valid, often veils our minds to seeing the symbolic significance. It was at this moment, I realized I was being called to reorient the manner in which I presented myself to the world. Clothing, while superficial to many, is nonetheless particularly indicative of the impression one wishes to communicate to others. Therefore, I understood this experience symbolically as a psychical message that my innermost being and how I wished to be perceived was not being reflected in the way in which I presented myself. Thus, I had to start from square one and bring these two expressions into alignment. 

    The power of integrating this symbolic perspective demonstrated by the monk and advanced within the RGMS, is quite beautifully articulated in a passage by the British philosopher Phillip Sherrard, speculating on the deeper meaning of the Fall from the Garden of Eden found in the Bible: 

     "The Fall may best be understood not as a moral deviation or as a descent into a carnal state, but as a drama of knowledge, as a dislocation and degradation of our consciousness, a lapse of our perceptive and cognitive powers—a lapse which cuts us off from the presence and awareness of other superior worlds and imprisons us in the fatality of our solitary existence in this world. It is to forget the symbolic function of every form and to see in things not their dual, symbiotic reality, but simply their non-spiritual dimension, their psycho-physical or material appearance. Seen in this perspective, our crime, like that of Adam, is equivalent to losing this sense of symbols; for to lose the sense of symbols is to be put in the presence of our own darkness, of our own ignorance. This is the exile from Paradise, the condition of our fallen humanity; and it is the consequence of our ambition to establish our presence exclusively in this terrestrial world and to assert that our presence in this world, and exclusively in this world, accords with our real nature as human beings. In fact, we have reached the point not only of thinking that the world which we perceive with our ego-consciousness is the natural world, but also of thinking that our fallen, subhuman state is the natural human state, the state that accords with our nature as human beings. And we talk of acquiring knowledge of the natural world when we do not even know what goes on in the mind of an acorn." 

 

    The question still beckons though, on how we might be able to incorporate this symbolic perspective into a musical context. For that, I would like to explore a piece by Alio Die by the name In the Labyrinth Garden from the album ‘Horas Tibi Serenas’. At the onset, we are presented with a wandering, but memorable melodic theme, which is a composite of many delicately interwoven parts. This beautiful phrase lilts about for some time garnering adornments and embellishments and merging with lush soundscapes of nature. Very gradually then, and rather unnoticeably, the identity of this theme begins to become obfuscated and morphs into a realm of textures and scattered embellishments. This sonic landscape ebbs and flows about for sometime, like the pathway through a Japanese garden. Then suddenly, the enchanting theme reappears. This moment almost comes as a surprise, since by virtue of its gradual disintegration one hasn’t consciously processed its absence. Upon reflection and analysis, however, one realizes that the content of this theme never actually disappeared, only its parts became scattered and unaligned so that what we heard as meandering textures was actually just the unweaving of this multi-component theme. The symbolism of this unfolding structure in this piece most directly lends itself to the newsletter at hand. The beautiful theme is like the Cathedral, through which we find ourselves carried off into a timeless transcendence. Then gradually as the theme becomes obscured, we withdraw from the Cathedral and move into the realm of seemingly chaotic movement, which we can only perceive as textural, unable to identify any of the patterns, which gave rise to the melodic movement or Gothic spires in the Cathedral. When suddenly, the theme reappears, through reflection we realize that it has in fact never left, only been scattered. Similarly then, we may recognize that the patterns of the Cathedral, which evoked that sense of wonder and awe, were and are in fact still present in all the seemingly random movement of the city outside its walls and stained glass windows.

The Visionary Commonwealth: Review of RGMS' 'Morning Bells'

 From the Visionary Commonwealth, RGMS presents a deep symbolic reflection on the experience of the album ‘morning bells’. Ewan Jenkins explores the significance of the bell as it relates to awakening, offering a profoundly personal, yet transcendent perspective on his engagement with the music. 

RGMS-006

Morning Bells

Read the Full Research Publication: Morning Bells Reviewed By TVC

Archetypes of Music

To further understand and dialogue with the nature of music, RGMS presents a model of theoretical analysis, which strives to engage directly with the empirical perception of a work of art. Archetypes of Music aims to navigate the most distilled polar fields within the realm of both immediate and linear awareness, and thus achieve a more accessible and discernible understanding of the musical process.

Read the Full Research Publication: Archetypes of Music

Mythology in the RGMS - Ep. 3

The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast: Episode Three

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The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast presents Episode 3: Mythology in the RGMS, in a series of explorations into music and its relationship to meaning. 

Sean Kiley and Iminah Kani discuss the role of myth in the RGMS, including the Greek tragedies Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and The Bacchae by Euripides, as well as the underlying mythos of the RGMS as outlined in the research publication The Way of Apollo and Dionysus in the RGMS.

Solétudes [RGMS-010]

 

RGMS-010

Released April 30, 2021

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Musings: 

Clarion radiance refracts through a pellucid aether. 

Cast in ambrosial tidings of incendiary’s essence. 

Mellifluous approbation resounds within the empyrean. 

Irises commensurately cried out, while Carnations climbed from chthonic depths. 

Dahlia and Hyacinth vibrate melic duets, the Chrysanthemum resurrects. 

Those atavistic once dormant, manumissioned and renewed. 

Tempest of Sol, from resplendence’s pleroma, 

Crosses over

Into the firmament of this mould, as the heart’s true apotheosis of gold. 

Solétudes

Composed and Produced by Noah Rosa

Promo: Solétudes

Music for Sine Waves II [RGMS-009]

RGMS-009

Released April 16, 2021

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Musings: An Anahata Nad, heard but never struck

Aloft this dance of air, fire, water, earth - in placelessness beyond all birth

Unraveling the labyrinth in mirrored waves

Reflects upon itself, uroboric yet heaven bent

Still, un-shimmering elixir

Holding fast to fleeting moments

The sine o' the times beckons us:

Fly

Music for Sine Waves II

Composed and Produced by Timo Pehkonen

Promo: Music for Sine Waves II

Empiricism of Music - Ep. 2

The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast: Episode Two

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The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast presents Episode 2: Empircism of Music, in a series of explorations into music and its relationship to meaning. 

Founder of the Visionary Commonwealth, Ewan Jenkins discusses with RGMS co-founder Sean Kiley the project of cultivating a both meaningful and beneficial relationship with music by analyzing our modes of engagement and empirical understanding of sound.

The Meaning Behind RGMS - Ep. 1

The Rube Goldberg Machine of Semiotics and Symbols Podcast: Episode One

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RGMS presents the first episode in a series of explorations into music and its relationship to meaning. 

Co-founders Sean Kiley and Davis Connors discuss the first RGMS research publication The Meaning Behind RGMS, which dives into the philosophical underpinnings of the rather mysterious name of the music collective and research journal.

About RGMS

An outline of the RGMS Mission Statement - a blooming cohesive current, which pervades and underpins the sanctioned efforts within the collective.

these memories are not my own, they're borrowed from my past [RGMS-008]

 RGMS-008

Released January 22, 2021

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Musings: That which has been infolded coming undone, unraveling - ten thousand things spontaneously. Hidden behind the veil of time, put on display in convolving ephemerality. Catching sight of the force that compels all, from immanent to transcendent, and back again - a processes’ journey, becoming flesh. No sooner born, then relegated to remembrance. Borrowed from the realm of being and non-being, memories, which shape this form, yet seem to perpetually inhabit a new self. Those borrowed from the ten thousand things: these vague recollections of a willing participant in the dance of entropy - nostalgia from a supernova - or those of a cog in a great concentration, some collective inhalation: the stringing of a spiders’ web, the sprouting of some Amazon, the songs of virile Wood Thrushes - all of which, converge, to bring a realization in the present moment, a reverence for those moments past, and an anticipation for a reunion of the two, reconciled into one.

these memories are not my own, they're borrowed from my past 

Composed, Performer, and Produced by James Layton

Mixed and Mastered by Sean Kiley

Promo: these memories are not my own, they're borrowed from my past

The Way of Apollo and Dionysus in the RGMS

Apollo and Dionysus by Leonid Ilyukin

The rgms mission statement proclaims: "By cultivating a heuristic to retroactively assess the unconscious workings of music making, the rgms aims to excavate what lingers in the unconscious and bring it forth in the form of a conscious framework, from which new works may be born." But just what does this mean? And, why, you might ask, shall we strive to excavate the Unconscious into the Conscious domain?  Still - how does assessing the processes of music making achieve this? 

On this day, the Epiphany, just as the Magi come bearing gifts, so too do those obscured forces, which underpin the celestial manuscript gifted to Bobby Goldberg, issue forth. Manifest, in this gift of insight, wherein those mysteries take repose, just beyond the peripherals of perception. The quest for the proverbial Grail asks: "Will this traveling in circles eventually cede, and open the lips of mystery?" A path as such, which may become clear in this far-reaching research publication.

The Way of Apollo and Dionysus in the RGMS

RGMS End of Year Retrospective: 2020

Last Light in the Forest by Michael Handt

RGMS End of Year Retrospective: 2020

 The wilderness is gathering up all its children again, beckoning psyche become still as an iced over pond - a reflection before dawn. 

With hardened soil and leafless trees, sounds of the winterscape reverberate in these freshly bare lands. Ears to the ground, we might catch a glimpse of the stirring Spring, mycelium matrices underneath, or even thoughts in a new light. 

Before long the mild sun sets beyond frozen hills, making way for ethereal hosts. Looking out into the midwinter night one senses something - something metaphysical, subtly placed, layered beneath time...

...Here we are again, at the edge of the year, where death feeds into birth. A stillness permeates the landscape, seizing us - and if we are attentive, it invites us to turn inward.

***

RGMS not only commemorates its inaugural year, but also the vast and varied spirit of the season. From the yulefest toast with holy ale, to the unadorned aluminum Festivus pole - new threads of religious syncretism stir. To say the least, we recollect the beginnings of Rhineland Christmas firs, the spectral procession of Odin’s Wild Hunt, and the boreal spruce trees sprouting troops of Amanita Muscaria at their roots. 

Cyclic workings would tend to escape us, yet present themselves in plain sight. Cyclic workings, which overlap and coil concurrently. Such cycles as the lunar phases and this month’s December Cold Moon, but even so on greater time scales, with the recent sightings of the ‘Christmas Star’ on the winter solstice, marking an 800-year cycle in the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn...and yet, a human lifetime is allotted, experienced in default view, alas, grasping just a bit further. 

Among such a mindset, a practice, and a settling down for the passing of a momentous year, RGMS reflects on our work published and the work to come. We present a playlist featuring our selected works this year aimed to construct a new, cohesive experience. We invite you to listen with us, to start new conversations, and become a part of future endeavors. 

RGMS End of Year Retrospective: 2020 (spotify playlist)

Polaris, a guiding light, sits upon the sacred tree. Axis mundi, the world ash - center of the cosmos and the structure of the universe - turns again between the celestial poles. During this season such imagery surrounds us. We find it’s reference wherever we look. A reminder, in a way, that is seemingly mystifying and mundane altogether: we are of the same substratum that encompasses throughout, as far as light can reach. Our action in alignment with these ideals is a gesture of universal workings, and we can only hope that from these most sacred of months that we hold fast to these customs as a new year is borne, bathed in cyclic time. It is a cycle longing for a retrospective in the face of the immanent wheel. A cycle, which is nothing without reprise, yet desires to corkscrew towards some seeming linearity, first convolves in upon itself before springing forward into uncharted territories. As the RGMS coils, we hold our collective breath at such potential energy; here we are my friends, anticipating the daredevilish leap over the abyss, pilgrims on the vessel 2020 reaped, ready to sew new forms to prepare for any and everything. To 2021, and many years to come! 

RGMS Releases in 2020: 

• Undercover Coroner [RGMS-000]
• Lecture on Nothing [RGMS-001]
• Music for Sine Waves I [RGMS-002]
• American Ozymandias [RGMS-003]
• Meditation Objects, Supplements, and Sequences (MOSS) Vol. I [RGMS-004]
• Early Studies in Sound [RGMS-005]
• Morning Bells [RGMS-006]
• Scylla / Charybdis [RGMS-007]

RGMS Publications in 2020: 

• The Meaning Behind RGMS
• Origins: Tony and Bobby Goldberg
• RGMS Release Code 
• Empiricism of Music 
• Artistic Hermeneutic Loop

Scylla / Charybdis [RGMS-007]

 RGMS-007

Released December 29, 2020

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Musings: Here we are, venturing into uncharted waters, betwixt the whirlwind of Dionysus and Apollo, searching for an unknown shore, a new route homewards. Steering as Odysseus, out of reach from Scylla, the fallen nymph, lusus naturae of the sea. She is the looming threat of Dionysus, poised to swallow us whole into undifferentiated collectivization, while Charybdis, progeny of Poseidon and Gaea, the personified whirlpool, awaits just across the way. She, like Apollo, impends upon our psyche, coaxing us down the proverbial rabbit hole of the solipsism. Yet – despite such hazards, like Odysseus, we maneuver clear, holding fast to such temperance both in our hearts and actions. A liminality, which pervades all domains. Between this performance of the automaton and the human being, between cacophony and harmony, between the ring chaos and ring cosmos, between solemnity and ecstasy, between Scylla and Charybdis, we continue unwaveringly, towards some ineffable home.

"Scylla" 

Composed and Performed by Davis Connors and Sean Kiley

Produced by Davis Connors 

"Charybdis"

Performed by Sean Kiley, Timo Pehkonen. and Colin Malloy

Composed by Sean Kiley and Davis Connors

Produced by Sean Kiley

Promo: Scylla / Charybdis