12.31.2022

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 -


12.22.2022

Altered States: RGMS-006 Morning Bells LIVE


 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.

6.08.2022

Music as the Dialectical Synthesis - Ep. 4

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

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.

1.17.2022

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

Released January 17, 2022


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.


1.06.2022

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 End of year Retrospective 2021 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)




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