*Note: This is the Free Content version of my interview with Michael Eisenberg. To access the entire episode, please consider becoming a Tier 3 'Garden of Arcane Delights' member on Patreon, or you can purchase this full episode for a one-time fee. My guest this month is Michael Eisenberg. Taken from Metapsychosis: Journal of Consciousness, Literature, and Art, Michael describes himself as “an avid, deep listener of Acousmatic music. Many people know this music under a myriad of names such as Electro-Acoustic, Musique Concret, computer music, music for loudspeakers etc. but I prefer to call it Acousmatic because that term seems, to me… the closest I can get to the “classical” definition of experiencing sounds completely divorced from the physical, mechanical, technological gestures that produced them. Sounds for sounds sake, organized in a manner that is meaningful on some level, usually the imaginal to the listener. My project is to overlay the so-called esoteric idea space, both ancient and modern on top of this music and discover connections, correspondences, sympathies and synchronicities that may aid in making suggestions on how to listen to this music.”In this discussion, Michael introduces acousmatic music, the history, the ideas behind the genre, and how it differs from other sounds such as ambient/atmospheric film music or soundscapes, for example. He calls this “music for loudspeakers, not performance,” although the genre has expanded to include performances known as “diffusions”. Michael also discusses his thoughts on how this music acts as a bridge to the Mundis Imaginalis, an esoteric concept taken from Persian/Sufi teachings and brought to the West by scholar Henry Corbin. He then talks more about his project, in collaboration with the Metapsychosis Journal, called “Acousmatic Crossings.” The music featured in this ongoing project strives to “break down the holding cell of what’s inside all of us. Our innate imaginal faculty, our inner genius jail breaks out of its unconscious black iron prison—the prison imposed by modernities infatuation with the degraded image… and begins to dream.
Acousmatic Crossings presents some of the artists creating in this space today. We have received a plethora of works, some from artists well established in this realm, many from artists new to me, all bursting with an intrinsic and untaught ability to transport you, the listener beyond the fields you know.
If you choose to explore these zones, there is only one simple prerequisite, a prerequisite that all of us have access to. And that is to simply use your cognitive imagination.”
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