The New New Age

Eight miles high over Europe on route to Seville, I was pleasantly surprised to notice New Age listed among the channels available for in-flight listening. I was even more surprised when I saw the artists associated with the genre: dance-oriented electronic musicians including DJ Shadow, U.N.K.L.E., Cinematic Orchestra, Howie B and DJ Food. And yet it all made total sense.

Let’s re-cast the entire genre, banish some artists to the Bardo of easy listening and recruit a whole new set of players to populate the New Age stage. First, we need a seminal moment — all good creation tales have them. Let’s take a trip back in time to when electronic music morphed into new age, like a strobe light blossoming into a Ketamine angel. The Shamen took heady new age concepts — including the speeches and writings of psychedelic philosopher Terrence McKenna — and fused them with club beats in a truly innovative way. In fact, McKenna lays down the blueprint for the end of time and the breakthrough into hyperspace on “Re-evolution” by the Shamen — it’s downright seminal. The New Age’s new high priest of psychedelic states not only draws up a map for the beginning of a new humanity, but relates it directly to dance music and the rhythmic response of our cells to beats and the magic that they perform on our DNA. This undoubtedly made the Shamen sound prophets of a new dancefloor philosophy that had more to do with the higher self than with the quick fix. Listen to the lyrics of "Destination Eschaton”; “There’s a strange attraction/a strong acceleration/see the light/enter the light/ become the light and shine the star that you know you are.” It’s right off the pages of futurist José Arguelles' noted The Mayan Factor, as well as the aforementioned McKenna’s True Hallucinations and the Archaic Revival.

The beats may now sound dated, the technology quaint, but the message is clear: This is new age gospel taken to the clubs in a direct and focused way, fueled by the rush of “E” flooding the clubbers' brains. The enlightenment experience so hungrily sought after by many new agers, a state usually reserved for ascetics and yogis, was now available to all. The Shamen ushered it into a new age of beats and grooves.

In his eMusic Dozen on Classic Rave Music, writer Simon Reynolds used the term “new age” in his description of “Pacific 202” by 808 State, referring to it as “new age house.” Indeed, the floating saxophone and muted trills of sampled chirps loping over a Chicago house-inspired groove brought together the dance floor aesthetic and the airy, feel-good ambiance of contemporary new age music, which, at that time, was exhibited by the likes of Andreas Vollenweider and William Aura, who bordered on smooth jazz. Ultramarine, also mentioned in Reynolds’ eMusic Dozen, also trafficked in new-agey sentiments on Every Man and Woman Is a Star. “Early Discovery” features a Native American elder talking about where they would hold their ceremonies as a lead-in to a gorgeous piece of Steve Reichian minimalist synth patterns shimmering over intelligent dub beats. While sales of new age artists like George Winston, Yanni and John Tesh would rapidly peak in the years to come, the seeds for the new new age took root in those recordings and others (such as William Orbit and Deep Forest) during that time.

Club music fans from that era have now graduated to the full-blown, downtempo, stoned-out grooves of Cinematic Orchestra, Tosca and Heights of Abraham. Just listen in on “The Cleric” and “E.V.A.,” two gorgeous offerings from Heights of Abraham's mid-'90s classic Electric Hush, and hear it pull back the veil between the old version of new age, catapulted mainly by the psychedelic explosion of the '60s, and the new sound of new age, propelled by the rush of E.

So let’s return to the beginning of this piece, where Shadow, DJ Food, U.N.K.L.E etc., all ended up on that new age channel. They are the descendants of the crossover and evolution of new age and electronic music from the early '90s. They may not be overt in their imagery or their associations, but their music has an effect that changes our perceptions and opens new vistas of consciousness. Just listen in on the narrative vignette “Back And Forth” from U.N.K.L.E. off Never, Never Land. After some sampled dialogue that comments on the transitory nature of existence, the track shifts into the soaring epic “Eye For An Eye,” journeying into the dark underbelly of the new age, asking probing existential questions about the nature of good and evil.

DJ Food’s turn-of-the-century classic, Kaleidoscope, on Ninja Tune, takes a jazzier path but its cut-up beats and samples have a soothing effect, especially on the sardonically hip “Aging Young Rebel,” which features legendary Beat poet Ken Nordine staring down the inevitability of decline that accompanies a look back in anger.

While they may not be able to push aside Yanni and Kitaro as iconic figures of the traditional definition of the new age, these electronic artists can occupy a new space all their own and help re-define what new age music is supposed to sound like.