Panamint Manse & The Heartwood Institute - Parapsychedelia (2020)

The Heartwood Institute and Panamint Manse forge a collaboration made between the Cumbrian Lake District and the Mojave Desert.

After sell out releases on Polytechnic Youth, Jonathan Sharp of The Heartwood Institute and Wayne P. Ulmer of The Panamint Manse join forces to create this wonderful album of otherworldly and sykwards electronic music. Rich in organic textures and weaving in sampled spoken passages. the LP takes inspiration from an exploration of obscure paranormal mental & spiritually occult spaces, reflecting that despite present day cynicism, there can be and still is a mystery behind the simplest of things. Says Wayne, “It's easy to be cynical about the magic of existence, and I think in a way we were trying to occupy a space that allowed for some wonder, the ability to just "not know". We wanted to make a reminder that these idea states we so often 'grow out of' are not only still present but worth exploration.”

So, magically inclined, work began from their individual locations of beautiful isolation. Jonathan hails from Cockermouth in the Lake District and Wayne in the beautifully scorched Mojave National Park. Panamint City is a ghost town in the Panamint Range, near Death Valley, California. Despite the extreme locations, the electronica here is delightfully warm, humanist and embracingly welcoming in its construction.

The collaboration was initiated by exchanging “a few sketches”, trading them to see what might pan out. The parapsychology influence started to take shape as tracks like “Clairvoyeurism” and “Zenner Cards” were written. Wayne again, “I sent “Zenner Cards” first, and was floored with how radically different and fresh it sounded when it came back from Jonathan - retaining the essence of my melodic phrases but with a widescreen handle on the vibe I was aiming for. After that we would send sketches back and forth working on bits, talking about notes, directions and intuitive feelings. We used a lot of analog synths, cassette recordings, a smattering of altered samples and a big book on Parapsychology from the college library.

Like the last two Heartwood Institute LPs, “Parapsychedelia”, features another superb Nick Taylor sleeve design with a full colour insert and initial copies include a redacted letter from The Mobius Group and Mobius Group joiner information request card. What would YOU pay to see the future?