We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

lightness

by Angela Winter

supported by
BD Cabrera
BD Cabrera thumbnail
Alex Ruder / Hush Hush Records
Alex Ruder / Hush Hush Records thumbnail
Una Temporada En El Infierno.
Una Temporada En El Infierno. thumbnail
Shear
Shear thumbnail
Signalstoerung
Signalstoerung thumbnail
Gorgochov
Gorgochov thumbnail
Flaneurist
Flaneurist thumbnail
riverotters
riverotters thumbnail
Will Hamilton - iriamu
Will Hamilton - iriamu thumbnail
Jon Graham
Jon Graham thumbnail
nanamiya
nanamiya thumbnail
Karen Vogt
Karen Vogt thumbnail
John Peels Ghost 👻
John Peels Ghost 👻 thumbnail
Richard Richard
Richard Richard thumbnail
Necrocius
Necrocius thumbnail
Lee-Eric
Lee-Eric thumbnail
Ryan Shiel
Ryan Shiel thumbnail
stanimosity
stanimosity thumbnail
jasonamullinaxfan
jasonamullinaxfan thumbnail
T. Hack
T. Hack thumbnail
-><-ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ-><-
-><-ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ-><- thumbnail
sirshannon
sirshannon thumbnail
Manfred Zierl
Manfred Zierl thumbnail
Michael Stewart
Michael Stewart thumbnail
Tristan Welch
Tristan Welch thumbnail
Julie Dill
Julie Dill thumbnail
PINZÓN
PINZÓN thumbnail
weichezaeune
weichezaeune thumbnail
virtoreal
virtoreal thumbnail
maxmetrault
maxmetrault thumbnail
Brunopolis
Brunopolis thumbnail
Bradley Bryan
Bradley Bryan thumbnail
Grant Stewart
Grant Stewart thumbnail
Kim Rueger
Kim Rueger thumbnail
Meghan Mulhearn
Meghan Mulhearn thumbnail
Bird wings
Bird wings thumbnail
Skysloop
Skysloop thumbnail
lynnar
lynnar thumbnail
tthomas311
tthomas311 thumbnail
Jeff Eacho
Jeff Eacho thumbnail
Caroline (Carrie) S.
Caroline (Carrie) S. thumbnail
Frank DiMauro
Frank DiMauro thumbnail
jon zellweger
jon zellweger thumbnail
Mac
Mac thumbnail
Todd Allred
Todd Allred thumbnail
franktornoe
franktornoe thumbnail
elisafaires
elisafaires thumbnail
boundacafewx
boundacafewx thumbnail
emilywashburn
emilywashburn thumbnail
lizf46
lizf46 thumbnail
phaserlito
phaserlito thumbnail
marcus65
marcus65 thumbnail
Bryce
Bryce thumbnail
Tom
Tom thumbnail
cbcfan
cbcfan thumbnail
achie_p
achie_p thumbnail
silepeela
silepeela thumbnail
carlopollio
carlopollio thumbnail
mkleiva
mkleiva thumbnail
tcranium
tcranium thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Bonus items include psychedelic album art
    Purchasable with gift card
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

      $8 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in an eco-friendly jacket printed on heavy recycled cardstock with green-friendly inks, with artwork by Alyson Plante, Plante Creative Studio, Richmond, VA.

    Includes unlimited streaming of lightness via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 80 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    7
    releases

    Get all 7 Angela Winter releases available on Bandcamp and save 40%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Mesmerizer, staring at the sun, Frost, Unfamiliar Language, Sonic Essences, lightness, and Hollow. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $31.80 USD or more (40% OFF)

     

1.
dewdrop in a cup 02:36
buy track
2.
voyage to the moon 04:30
buy track
3.
dust in sunlight 03:12
buy track
4.
see yourself as a cloud 05:10
buy track
5.
interstice 01:26
buy track
6.
shooting stars 03:45
buy track
7.
the stones also breathe 03:08
buy track
8.
beyond ice mountain 02:34
buy track
9.
this floating world 03:48
buy track

about

NEW & NOTABLE release on Bandcamp, 9/7/2021

“Very beautiful.” —Maria Somerville, NTS Radio Live

+++

The story of lightness

“When the human realm seems doomed to heaviness, I feel the need to fly like Perseus into some other space. I am not talking about escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I feel the need to change my approach, to look at the world from a different angle, with different logic, different methods of knowing and proving.” —Italo Calvino, “Lightness,” Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Tsuyu toku toku
kokoromi ni ukiyo
susugabaya

With clear melting dew,
I’d try to wash away the dust
of this floating world

—Matsuo Bashō, Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, trans. by Sam Hamill

The lightness album arrived in waves. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the first part to emerge was the album’s theme, when news of the pandemic started crossing the globe in early March 2020 and places began to lock down.

Anxious about the unknown times ahead, I went to see a certain ginkgo tree that’s special to me. I sat beneath the ginkgo, meditated, and asked the tree for guidance. The ginkgo replied: “Make a study of joy. Joy is active. Surrendering to what is is joy.” As I meditated, the ginkgo showed me images of sunlight, a bug crawling, a bird landing on a branch, people touching bark, wind rustling through leaves. These are joy for the ginkgo, I realized.

The ginkgo provided more guidance: “Breathe. Find the space inside. Receive and rejoice. There is a hole in this world that leads to the hole in all other worlds. The purpose is to journey. You humans are just learning.”

I asked: How can I help? The ginkgo replied: “Offer joy. Re-member the true world through joy.”

I woke the next day wondering how to live through a pandemic while contributing something positive and valuable. Years ago, the shaman Malidoma Somé told me my task is to bring beauty to the world with my voice while serving as a messenger, healer, and artist. I didn’t know how to proceed with that work during a lockdown, so I decided the best course of action was to follow the ginkgo’s guidance by studying joy. I also sought counsel from other spirit guides as I went along. Hummingbirds arrived to expand my curriculum, and as I began following their example, lightness became part of my learning, too.

I read Italo Calvino’s essay on lightness in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, taking copious notes while following his expeditions into science, myth, poetry, literature, folk tales, and shamanic culture. Around the same time, I was doing research for an experimental piece I was composing when I ran across a mention of Matsuo Bashō’s poetic philosophy of karumi, or lightness. Bashō’s advice to his students was to give their poetry a sense of immediacy by composing lightly and gently with ordinary words, like a clear stream flowing over a sandy bed. This emphasis on fresh perspective and naturalness echoed the aesthetics of Japanese painting during that time, which focused on painting lightly and leaving “overtones” and incomplete, open space for viewers to fill with meaning and imagination. These characteristics of Bashō’s poetry and Japanese painting reminded me of the abstract experimental and ambient music I was listening to constantly.

I was fascinated by this exploration of lightness from different perspectives—Eastern and Western, Japanese and Italian, older and more modern—during the heaviest parts of 2020. As I read Bashō’s poetry and Calvino’s thoughts on lightness, I began to perceive secret gardens within the small spaces I was inhabiting during lockdown. It was as though tiny worlds and entire galaxies were revealing themselves within the ordinary confines of home. During a sudden thunderstorm on the summer solstice, mycelial music flowed through my consciousness, and I recorded myself singing the experimental, wordless compositions that streamed through me.

But the album project didn’t begin to take shape until the Independence Day holiday of 2020, when a wasp stung me out of absolute nowhere. The wasp’s sting seemed to say: Get going! Make something of what you’re learning to share with others. Do it now and with lightness!

So I did. I gave myself 108 days—a sacred number in Buddhism and Hinduism—to write and record the album. The recordings sat fallow for another 108 days as I learned how to mix audio. Then I mixed and produced lightness during a third and final cycle of 108 days, finishing in early June 2021.

Lightness is a flotation device. It’s about very light objects that are in motion. It’s about dewdrop perspectives, stones that breathe, flowers, shooting stars, beauty and deprivation, playfulness and spontaneity, ephemera and fragility, floating worlds, spiderwebs, dust particles in sunlight, tiny shells bubbling on thirsty sand, and sudden, nimble leaps out of the heaviness of the world. It’s about levitation, surrealism, and hyperrealism. It’s about owls and aliens. It’s about voyages to the moon and flights to other worlds. It’s about sadness made light with tenderness and a steady gaze. It’s about true freedom within apparent confinement. It’s about seeing yourself as a cloud.

Working with lightness has utterly transformed me. May it free you, too.

Love,
Angela

P.S. This is a headphones album, so put this music in your ears. You’ll find candy for them there.

credits

released September 3, 2021

CREDITS

PRODUCTION—Produced, recorded, and mixed by Angela Winter; mastered by Beached Records, Preston, UK, beachedrecords.bandcamp.com/music

PUBLISHING—Written and published by Angela Winter (ASCAP)

PERFORMANCES—Vocals, synths, piano, ukulele, and field recordings by Angela Winter; field recordings of the Apollo 11 launch and radio waves on “voyage to the moon” by NASA (public domain); field recording of wind on “beyond ice mountain” and “interstice” by Florian Reichelt @florianreichelt on freesound.org (CC0 license)

COVER DESIGN—Alyson Plante, Plante Creative Studio, Richmond, VA; cover photo by Dzmitry Tselabionak @tsellobenok on Unsplash

ALBUM PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN, AND ART DIRECTION—Photography by Chuck Cunningham, Mebane, NC, nocontextzine.com, @nocontextzine; design and art direction by Alyson Plante, Plante Creative Studio, Richmond, VA, plantecreativestudio.com

THANKS AND MORE—Thank-you notes, psychedelic album art, and works cited are at angelawinter.com/lightness-sleeve-notes

Send sparkly bits and ephemera to: Winter Creative Studio, 304 W. Weaver St. Suite 230, Carrboro, NC 27510, USA

dedicated to Tim Carless (1966-2021)

© ℗ 2021 Angela Winter, all rights reserved

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Angela Winter image

Angela Winter Carrboro, North Carolina

Ambient, ritual, and experimental music for thresholds, where synths, keys, and strings meet otherworldly vocals, shimmering drones, and overtones.

“Beautifully haunting.” —Bandcamp Daily

“Stunning.” —Foxy Digitalis

“Spellbinding” —Lost and Found Sounds ... more

contact / help

Contact Angela Winter

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Angela Winter recommends:

If you like Angela Winter, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Anaiis chats about recording with Sessa, Luedji Luna, and friends in Brazil.
listen now