The Gifts You Bring

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums
18 Apr
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!

NGCB + Consciousness Hacking

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: dance • news • talks
01 Mar

Hi everyone, I wanted to share some upcoming events and some new music I’ve released today

Unplugged: Consciousness Hacking

Tonight (March 1) there’s a meet up in Philadelphia of mediators, coders and seekers. These gatherings are always a mind opening event. Beginners and those with no meditation experience are welcome!

I’ll be presenting a binaural beats system as a way to hack your consciousness and create altered states.

PromptWorks
1211 Chestnut Street Suite 400, Philadelphia, PA (map)
6pm
http://www.meetup.com/N3rd-Street/events/228705518/

Ephemeral

Two weeks ago Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet debuted their seminal work Ephemeral, for which I composed the score. I am really proud of this piece and I feel like it’s the culmination of my working relationship with Nora over the past six years. The dancers and technical crew performed flawlessly to packed audiences over three shows and it was wonderful.

Here’s two glowing reviews of the piece:

Also for the first time ever, I’m releasing the score of the ballet as an album today. You can download (MP3, FLAC) the hour long album from Bandcamp.

Sleep Music Concert

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State
March 19, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. – March 20, 2016 at 7:00 a.m.
$10-$20 sliding scale
thefidget space (1714 N Mascher Street)

<fidget> Artist in Residence Michael McDermott will be performing an all night sleep music concert.

For the past 10 years, Michael has been performing as an ambient music artist under the moniker Mikronesia. For this concert he will be presenting a long-form work based on the themes of death, bardo and reincarnation found in the sacred Buddhist text known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The live performance using synthesizers, tape loops and slow motion surround sound sonic landscapes will warp the audiences’ perception of time as the music will reach the level of near stillness through the wee hours of the morning. This part of the concert will be meant to be experienced subsciouslessly as McDermott will cycle through his interpretation of themes of death and rebirth found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The score will culminate at sunrise concluding the sonic lullaby. On display will be video tape loops by artist Alex Bond.

The show is twelve hours long. We invite you to bring blankets, sleeping bags and pillows. We’ll also have sleep inducing dream tea to aid in the journey.

Preview McDermott’s first foray into “Sleep Music,” Quiescent to get a taste of the sonic landscape: https://mikronesia.bandcamp.com/album/quiescent

Blackstar Video

Finally, last month I had the pleasure to play at a night celebrating the life and music of one of my heroes, David Bowie. Every set was really powerful and beautiful. I played synthesizer with the band Professor Maybe. We did two instrumentals from Low and Bowie’s last epic song “Blackstar”. Here’s a video from the show: