Coronal Loops

I’m very excited to share a new album of ambient music on the sublime label Healing Sound Propagandist (a sub-label from Past Inside the Present).

Healing Sound Propagandist is a digital-only sublabel of Past Inside the Present that further explores the sounds and textures that PITP has become known for; expanding both upon their dreamier meditative output as well as texture-focused arrangements by ambient artists from around the world.

All albums and artists associated with HSP are hand-picked by the PITP team. The goal of the HSP imprint is to highlight talented artists and open up a broader opportunity for artists and composers to release their works with the backing, support, and promotional assistance from the parent label. The intent is to bring a collection of hidden gems to a wider audience through the Healing Sound Propagandist sublabel.

Coronal Loops is a sonic reflection on the nature of waiting, uncertainty, and isolation. This album contains loops and fragments created during the 2020-21 Pandemic. Many of the tracks were born from the much longer sonic meditations created for Michael’s YouTube channel. The intention was to provide a soothing escape and to illuminate an inner light that shines in each of us. Michael’s work as a certified Deep Listening® facilitator, Therapeutic Musician, and meditation teacher inform a sense of expansiveness, stillness, and transcendence found in each track.

Heavenly Bodies

I have a new album out today on the Italian ambient label Pregnant Void. This new collection of healing frequencies was derived and dedicated to the classical nine planets of our solar system.

The sounds of Heavenly Bodies were composed using the spatial movements of the planets translated into frequencies. Astronomy is the application of geometry through space, music is the application of geometry through time. This album seeks to bridge the spatial and sonic by exploring the sacred ratios and mathematics that guide the planets as they dance through our solar system with perfect balance and precision.

Available for download on Bandcamp and on all streaming platforms.

The Dream Cycles

Hello everyone, I am pleased to share with you a new album of sleeping > dreaming music. This album is eight and half hours long and is a supportive soundtrack for a deep night’s sleep and an extended journey into the realm of dreams. Available as a “pay what you want” release on Bandcamp and coming to streaming platforms soon.
“We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.” –Henry Ward Beecher

The Dream Cycles

For almost two decades ambient musician and consciousness explorer Michael Reiley has an interest in creating music for the liminal space between waking, dreaming, and sleep. On the 21st of January, 2021, Michael will release a long-form work called The Dream Cycles. This eight and a half-hour long album contains a carefully crafted mix of musical tones, binaural beats (for headphone listeners) tuned to aid sleep, long periods of silence or barely audible soundscapes to aid in the cycles of deep sleep, an extended session during the third phase of sleep to guide in lucid dreaming, and a gently unfolding piece of music on the piano that emerges slowly from the lucid dream suite like a mirage to welcome you into the Hypnopompic state of shifting towards waking consciousness.
The album is the third in a trilogy of sleep music albums. 2014’s eight-hour sleep album Quiescent was hailed internationally for its soothing, sleep-inducing textures described as “A ‘gateway’ to an ephemeral place and beyond”. Michael also has several years of experience playing sleep/dream concerts in lofts, homes, studios, and even a dream psychologist’s office.
The Dream Cycles evolves from Michael’s 2020 offering Celestial Music Box, an online platform that generates soothing ambient music by using the position of overhead stars in the sky creating an immersive, healing wash of sound conducted by the stars and planets above. Also during the pandemic, Michael offered several overnight steaming sleep concerts in a series called Sleep Stream on his YouTube channel mixing field recordings, looped keyboards, and hand pan improvisations for fans around the world.
The Dream Cycles’ title is adapted from a book by H.P. Lovecraft from his “Dreamlands” series. Michael’s study and practice of Buddhism, Dream Yoga, Lucid Dreaming, and his work and teaching of “Listening in Dreams” practice with Deep Listening co-founded IONE all inform the musical journey through the spectrums of consciousness illuminating the night as we listen, sleep, dream, dissolve, and reemerge reborn and anew every morning.

H E L I O S T Ā S I O

I am very pleased to share with the world a collaborative album with French ambient pop artist, Wild Anima. Heliostāsio stands for the balance of the sun by ancient Greeks to describe the solstice. This ambient album is the outcome of an impromptu live jam session when I was in residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin.
Inspired by our own individual stays in Iceland this album paints a multi-layered soundscape standing in between night and day and time and matter. Translating this infinite yet ephemeral moment found in the dance of the celestial bodies, where shadow and light slip softly in between the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. The spaces in between, dawn and dusk, solstices, and equinoxes. Recurring patterns yet never the same.

Vipassana

I’m pleased to present a new album of meditation music. These sounds are offered as an inner reflection of ever-changing reality as a wordless guided sonic meditation. It’s Bandcamp Friday, so if you can afford to buy this one, I get 100% of the money as part of the generosity of Bandcamp. If you can’t afford the download now, no worries. Let me know, I’ll be releasing some download codes next week and I will send you a free download code to add this music to your collection take with you offline.

Vipassanā

As an extension of my weekly offering on Meditative Soundscapes comes a new album in the “Meditation” series. This collection of music explores the broad and important concept of Vipassnā as a form of meditation. The album can experienced as a soundtrack to a wordless guided meditation to explore the “three marks of existence” as the ultimate inquiry into true nature of existence. It can also be explored as a curiosity or background ambient music or as a soundtrack to your life.

Vipassanā (Pāli) or vipaśyanā (Sanskrit) literally, “special-seeing”, “special, seeing (Passanā)”, is a Buddhist term that is often translated as “insight”. The Pali Canon describes it as one of two qualities of mind which is developed (bhāvanā) in Buddhist meditation, the other being samatha (mind calming). It is often defined as a form of meditation that seeks “insight into the true nature of reality”, defined as anicca “impermanence”, dukkha “suffering, unsatisfactoriness”, anattā “non-self”, the three marks of existence in the Theravada tradition, and as śūnyatā “emptiness” and Buddha-nature in the Mahayana traditions.

Samatha

Hello. I’ve got a new album out today. Scroll down for some free download codes for the first 100 people that redeem them! Also, I’ll be doing an online (of course) SLEEP STREAM concert on my YouTube Channel this Saturday night.

SAMATHA

Welcome to Samatha, a new album of gently unfolding waves of sounds. This simple suite contains over 2.5 hours of long-playing tracks that move slowly with many pauses in sound to make room for your own experience. My hope is that this soothing, relaxing soundscape can bring some level of calm-mindfulness to your experience.

SAMATHA

SLEEP STREAM CONCERT

Like many people around the globe, I’ve been struggling with the agitation that comes from relative captivity from the COVID-19 lockdown. That has resulted in some level of insomnia. This Saturday I’ll be going Live on my YouTube Channel. (Thanks by the way to all those that subscribed to get me to 100 subscribers so I can LiveStream!)

SLEEP STREAM

As an (online) concert experience these durational soundscape performances last from night until early the next morning.  These sleep concerts are an immersive, supportive sonic environment. A gentle sea of ambient field recordings and soft tones unfold over an evolving eight-hour concert. 

Themes of rebirth, Bardo states, stillness, the liminal space between sleeping-waking-dreaming-listening, processed environmental sounds and the edges of audibility are explored during these concerts.

This is a great chance for those who always wanted to experience one of my sleep concerts from your own bed 🙂 I’ll start at 9pm EST and go until… I don’t know, several hours at least 😉

with Mettā,
Michael

Philly Projects April 2018

Good morning or evening friends. Below are some events I’m involved with and news about the release of a new Landscapes album. Thank you for your continued support and interest in my musical adventures!


Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet presents HUMAN

I am really excited for this next chapter in my long collaboration with one of the most exciting choreographers working in contemporary ballet. This science fiction influenced ballet has stunning digital video, beautiful lighting, strong dancers, intricate choreography and an engulphing score that wraps you up like an electric blanket. Not to be missed!

April 20, 21, 8:00 PM & April 22, 3:00 PM (with artist Q&A)
Performance Garage
1515 Brandywine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19130
Tickets


What Do Opossums Dreams Sound Like?

I’m happy to be collaborating with an old friend, Liza Goodell from Spiral Q Puppet Theater on this show. She has built a giant opossum sculpture that people are invited to lie down in. Inside will be my soundtrack of what I imagine an opossum’s dreams sound like while he’s “playing dead”.  Plus they’ll be work by Katie Parry, Tom Parry, and Marina Borker

ST. BERNARD LION: AN ARTISTIC EXPLORATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD FOLKLORE
April 20 – May 18, 2018
Opening reception Friday, April 20th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
University City Arts League
4226 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104​
More Info


William Fields + Mikronesia @ Event Horizon
Still from William Fields’ visuals for Landscapes Live
Landscapes 3, Uttarakhand

If you missed my Landscapes show at the Rotunda (see the photo above from the show with William Fields’ brilliant real-time projections) and wanted to hear part of my surrealists’ field recordings creations from North India, I just released an album on Bandcamp, Landscapes 3: Uttarakhand  with gorgeous artwork by my fellow PECAH resident Isabel Moreno.


Lastly, for those who are into meditation or would like to learn more, I’ll be teaching four classes at Springboard Studio this week and next. This is a great class for beginners or experienced meditators who want to go deeper into the classic Buddhist text of the Satipatthāna Sutta. Each class will have periods of silent meditation, teaching, and discussion.

Satipattāna: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Wednesday, April 18, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Sunday, April 22, 7:30 – 9:00 PM
Wednesday, April 25, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Sunday, April 29, 7:30 – 9:00 PM

Springboard Studio
530 Carpenter Lane, West Mt. Airy
 

2017 In Review

Happy holidays to everyone reading this! Thanks for being a part of an amazing year of sonic adventures. Without the connection I get by sharing these sounds, moments and memories with you all, this would be meaningless. In the midst of the busy holiday season I hope you’re all finding moments of connection and peace.
If you’re looking for a tonic to the holiday sensoral overload, I recommend two Mikronesia ambient albums I released this year. :dibba-sota is a quiet sonic meditation on Deep Listening and natural spaces and Dissolve is an hour long continuous piece of music that was described by music legend King Britt as “sonic sage”, great for clearing and cleansing a space. In the spirit of the season all the albums on my Bandcamp (including the Landscapes series) are “name your price”. So you can download for free or pay any price that’s good for you 🙂

dibba-sota

Also this year I released three albums in a series called Landscapes. These albums were created at artists residencies around the world this year. The intention of these albums is to allow the listener to experience a sense of place through listening and explore the sonic character of a geographic location. The environmental recordings are augmented with subtle effects and “sonic photography” techniques to represent our own coloring of sound through listening consciousness.

Landscapes 3: Iceland

In 2018 I’ll be continuing my nomadic life with residencies at Com Peung in Chiang Mai, Thailand and PECAH in Uttarakhand, India. I’m very excited to travel to Asia for the first time and focus on the soundscape recording, creation and Echozoo at these residencies.
In addition to traveling and releasing music this year I was glad to begin a new collaborative project Mixes from the Field, with fellow Deep Listener Sharon Stewart. This project seeks to connect people of all ages to explore modes of Deep Listening and the work of Pauline Oliveros through field recording, sonic meditation and music. Our initial project was supported by American Composers Forum for workshops in Philadelphia at Village of Arts and Humanities. My connection with VAH will continue in 2018 in an exciting community project around a basketball court in North Philadelphia that’s being renovated by the Philadelphia 76ers. More on this early next year….

VAH Students exploring the sonic spaces above Philadelphia

Mixes from the Field also led workshops and soundwalks in Berlin, Germany and Arnhem, Netherlands. We’re hoping to continue the work in 2018!
A quick note for anyone in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve. I’ll be leading a dharma talk, discussion and silent meditation at Springboard Studio in Mt. Airy from 10pm through midnight. The theme for the night will be intention and the infinite potentials found in the ground of being. Hope to see you there! It will be my last night in Philly as I fly to Thailand on Jan 1!
Again, thanks for being a part of an amazing 2017 and I look forward to keeping in touch with you all in 2018.
with Mettā,
Michael

Landscapes

Greetings from Iceland! I’m currently writing you from the epic coastal mountains in Olafsfjordur where I am artist in residence at Listhus. Mostly I’m recording environmental sounds, doing research and sound designing extinct creatures for Echozoo. I also have access to a beautiful music studio at the nearby college at night, so I’ve also been recording some piano and other instrumental textures, mixing and editing sounds in the studio there and generally getting inspiration from the ancient landscapes here.

Olafsfjord
Music Studio

  Speaking of landscapes I’m happy to share with you a new album I’m releasing today. This one was inspired by a completely different environment, the rainforests of Brazil. In June I was artist in residence at Casa Na Ilha. During this residency I was again working on sounds for Echozoo. I had so much material and was so inspired by the sights, sounds and “emotional landscapes” (to quote my favorite Icelander) that I ended up working on a new album. This is the first in what I hope will be a series called Landscapes. This series seeks to meld field recordings from a specific environment with subtle ambient textures and beats in a process I called Sonic Photography.

Landscapes 1: Ilhabela   The last project I wanted to share with you was from of my on-going composer residency at Village of the Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia through American Composers Forum. While I was back in Philadelphia in July I taught a class that was a continuation of the Mixes from the Field project teaching high school students about listening and making music from the sounds of their enviroment. This project was for the students to create a Village Sound Map. It involved recording sounds from around the campus of the Village on portable field recorders, editing the sounds in post-production and creating a sound map to show what this neighborhood in North Philadelphia sounds like. Also some students used these sounds to make their own Village Sound Map remixes. Check it out!

Happy summer, be well and keep listening to everything all the time.

The Gifts You Bring

Lakshmi's Gifts

I’m pleased to announce a collaborative debut with renowned yoga/chant musician David Newman. The project is called Binaural Mantras. Our first piece is a 20 minute sonic meditation using a chant dedicated to the goddess Lakshmi. The song is available as a pay-what-you-want release on White Swan Record’s Bandcamp. We’re releasing it today on tax day in the US as a positive message of abundance and generosity. More from White Swan Records: The Goddess Lakshmi bestows abundance and prosperity and reminds us that the flow of giving and receiving are interconnected. We offer you this special recording entitled Lakshmi’s Gifts by Binaural Mantras, a collaboration between chant artist, David Newman and ambient musician Michael Reiley McDermott. This groundbreaking recording merges Sanskrit mantras with binaural beats in an ambient soundscape using sound healing technology to empower abundance and inspiration. We’ve made it available to you on Tax Day as a message and tool for manifesting prosperity, and serving humanity with ease un-distracted by financial concerns, and with the resources available to you to influence positive change in the world. In the Spirit of Lakshmi, we invite you to pay as you please for this gift from our hearts to yours!


NYC SLEEP CONCERTS

May 5th and 6th I’ll be doing two sleep music concerts in New York City. The May 6th concert in Soho is already sold out. There are still tickets remaining for the May 5th concert in Brooklyn.

These sleep concerts are an immersive, supportive sonic environment. Relax as a gentle sea of ambient found sounds and soft tones unfold over an evolving eight-hour concert. People who have attended these concerts in the past have described it as a profound experience. Let your unconscious body-mind receive this soothing tone bath.

Please bring a yoga mat, sleeping bag, blanket and pillows.

Pre-sleep concert sets by IVY MEDOWS and CURVED LIGHT.

MAGICK – CITY
37 Box Street
Greenpoint
$20 / Sliding Scale

FACEBOOK EVENT / TICKETS


:dibba-sota

In case you missed it, I released a new ambient album on Bandcamp called :dibba-sota. This will be the kind of still, serene music you will hear at the sleep music concerts. Enjoy!