InsideEnvironments’s Psychedelic “Psychological Sound”
Victor Szabo
Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off November 16, 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190699307.003.0002 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Syntonic Research's Environments series, exemplified by the 1970 recording Tintinnabulation, packaged avant-garde minimalism and psychedelic counterculture ideals as a mass-market commodity, framing recorded cyclical and droning sounds as psychologically and psychedelically efficacious. |
Abstract
AbstractThe first chapter focuses on Tintinnabulation (Contemplative Sound), a 1970 recording of bells from Syntonic Research, Inc.’s Environments series of nature sound LPs. The Environments series, created by Irv Teibel, between 1969 and 1979 popularly packaged spare audio recordings, mostly of nature sounds, under the pretense of their “psychological” efficacy. This chapter historicizes Environments and avant-garde minimalism together as concurrent and overlapping explorations of the psychological—and psychedelic—affordances of recorded cyclical and droning sounds. It investigates 1960s psychedelic art, as well as the early marketing of recorded minimal music in the late ’60s, as formative contexts for Teibel’s promotion of ambient audio as a hip commodity. Using Tintinnabulation as its chief example, it demonstrates how Environments embodied the ideals of the psychedelic counterculture as it popularized the hypnotic sonic minimalism of its avant-garde participants for a mass middle-class market.