Jon Hopkins and East Forest are the uncrowned kings of a new music genre specifically intended for ceremonial guidance. Fresh off an epic ceremony concert in Austin, we discuss how music is a technology that is intrinsic to creating an optimal psychedelic ceremony. This goes back to the early days of the icaros and medicine songs of the elders, and has now been translated with mastery into the digital era. We get into the nitty gritty of what this music is offering to the collective in a time its most desperately needed, and we also look ahead to the potential advancements that can come to this art form. Jon shares his DMT experiences that influenced the making of his "Music For Psychedelic Therapy" and all of the seen and unseen help we have when we bring our creations into the world. The music they've created have been invaluable resources for my journeys. They are true masters at their craft and I highly encourage all of you tocheck out their work.

AUBREY: East Forest, John Hopkins. We did something pretty wild and incredible last night. You guys are both on the forefront of this new genre of thing. Which is one part concert and one part absolute mind bending cosmic ceremony. And we just did an example of that. And this is the first time you guys collaborated in that way where you were both offering it. But this is a very interesting thing that we just put out into the collective yesterday. 

EAST: Yeah, I think concerts though are always a form of ceremony and I think we know that. It's just kind of fun when you lean into it. So what was it like for you? How was it different from what you've experienced with other concerts?

AUBREY: Well, I've experienced your version of this before, right? And it's always really special because you're able through your looping machines, through the live instrumentation that you're playing, you're actually creating something that moves with the energetics of the space that you're in. So it's always a bit different. Some things are similar, but it's always a bit different. And last night was, to me, just the most special version of that. I think it was the collective intention of everybody there, the space itself, the time, I think the gravity of the situation of bringing John in, who we both admire for different reasons. You as a musician and as a human, me is just like somebody who's guided me over the last year and a half through some of the most potent journeys of my life, starting with the meditation bowl ascension track, which came in right when ketamine came into my life and was like, it was this huge synchronicity of, wow, this he's making real magic happen sonically in concert with this medicine that I'm just becoming familiar with. So there's this gravitas to the event and how it was all laid out, all of the mats in a circle, everything kind of coming together in that way. And so we went through yours and your concert was stunning, like stunningly beautiful. And really like the, I don't know, it was just exceptional to be able to be in there with you. You and also your partner Radha were weaving through the space and creating this experience that broke down the fourth walls. I really think that's another beautiful thing that you're doing with Radha's help, playing certain instruments in the crowd that she would come over to our section and you were playing on stage and then she would play different bells and chimes.

EAST: You know where that came from is some ayahuasca ceremonies where there was a shaman that I worked with who would move around the room a lot. And I know like when you're in space and you're really deep in this cosmic space, it was as if he was literally the sound was just in different places cause he's moving around the room. And I thought it was so playful and so I wanted to bring in that idea, like the sound moving around the room. And so when you're in the space, it's not just statically in one place. It feels fun. 

AUBREY: You get this spatial multidimensional thing. I mean, I have my mind fold mask on. So, but in the way that the sound was reverberating off of all the different walls, we're in a metal building. We're in this metal spaceship of different shapes and acoustic quality, and then to have the sound bouncing off different things. So it's hard to even tell where it's coming from. And then to have local things happening. It was just a really special experience to go through that. So I, of course, knowing that it was a ceremony, took my ketamine prescription and ramped it up, not fully aware that I was going to be doing an interview at the end. I was like several fast dissolves in. And someone's like, so what we're going to do instead of questions from the audience. You guys are just going to talk on stage. 

EAST: You asked if you're involved in the Q and A. We're like, you're definitely involved. Yeah. 

AUBREY: I was like, excellent. This will be fun, but I wasn't going to miss this. This is a very special thing. And I wanted to get the most out of it for myself. So I was in the ceremony in that space. It was really incredible to go through that environment at that time with you and have just one of those other unique experiences that I could add to my list of experiences I've shared with you already.

EAST: Thank you for hosting it. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

EAST: Well, we've been doing that for a bit, but it took it to a whole nother space adding Jon into the mix. I just felt like I learned so much about what ceremony music can be and expanding what we think about that. You're bringing a kind of sophistication to this that I'm hoping we see more of because in the past, a lot of this music in the modern sense has been relegated into the new age and discarded and honestly, some of it maybe isn't the most interesting musicality and so it hasn't– 

JON: You're being very tactful here.

EAST: Yeah, so going back to the positive, it was just great to see something that says high musicianship. And to hear it on such a big system like that too, it's such a treat to hear all these other treats going on with the low end and how that's just a physical sensation. You remember that music essentially is a physical experience.

AUBREY: Absolutely. So I'll get into the next part of that. So the one part, if we're going to do this again, we got to work on the break in between. 

EAST: No break, maybe. 

AUBREY: Yeah, like somehow those got emerged a little better because that was kind of intense. Cause we're like right in the middle of the center. We did a good job. Everybody held it together, but it was like, “whoa, what's going on?” Like, you guys were switching up, striking some things, which made some sense, but ultimately finding a way to bridge right in. But anyways, we made it through that part, and had an interesting journey to the bathroom. As many journeys to the bathroom go in ceremony space. Like, come on, body, you know how to pee. You've done this so many times.

JON: Always the boss.

AUBREY: You got this, Aubrey, don't worry about the people looking at you. They don't care. They're on their own journey. So I'm on a journey with that. Get back in. And then the music just kind of starts and–

JON: I didn't want to say anything because I'm not, well, firstly, I kind of felt the way the album begins, and people will hopefully be hearing it at this point it starts with quite a statement, which is, it's a tincture cymbal mixed with a kind of rising tone, which was an idea that, like most of my ideas come to me in the studio when I'm writing and I respond to sounds I'm hearing, but it's the only time this has ever happened. I was walking down the street and like a bolt from the blue, it was just, I knew the album started with that note and it's an F and it must start there and it must rise and then another one starts behind it and another one starts behind it. And I have no idea why, but when we talked about this after you first heard it, you said it gave you that kind of almost like a lurching feeling in the stomach, which is like– 

EAST: It's a fantastic opener, 

JON: Like something's about to happen. 

AUBREY: I was like oh shit, and then that happened and I could feel it, like I could feel the whole place go like, Oh shit.

EAST: It gives you that feeling like, what did I do to be like, yeah, wait a minute, what did I take? 

JON: I think that quite often about this album, like, what is it? But I just thought rather than having me kind of shyly mumble what the album's called and introduce myself, which would not be my thing, I said, let's let that note do that. And we can talk afterwards and I'll feel more comfortable, but it was such an overwhelming and beautiful thing to see. So many receptive people listening to something which has been private. I think you guys had both heard it and maybe 15, 20 other people. The biggest group listening I've had so far was 9 people and with each increase in numbers of people hearing it, it's a real privilege. So yeah. Thank you both for helping me. 

AUBREY: The privilege is ours.

EAST: And having everyone listen to it so attentively, giving their attention. That's what we say is like the greatest gift you can give is your attention, in anything. And when you do it like that collectively with a music experience like that, it's special. Because most shows, people are not really paying attention fully. 

AUBREY: Oh, there was no option. 

EAST: And certainly not everybody. 

AUBREY: There was no option for not paying attention. From the moment that thing started, everybody was dropped in and the intensity of it. I mean, I've listened to this album many times on good headphones and it's lovely and it's powerful. But in that room with that sound quality and that resonance, it was this unavoidable journey. Like we were on a rocket ship and the intensity and softness, the blend of both was really stunning to behold. And I'm in the audience of course, and people are having experiences, like as this thing's building, it moves into the Teos cave section of it, which is this beautiful descent. And we'll talk a little bit about this beautiful descent down into the cave. And then this emergence and it builds in this sonic intensity and people are starting to have to breathe like, and then some people are having to go through some mantras and chants. It was ‘keep it together; sounds. It was really what it was like. And people are like, some like Hindu chants, like Ram, like these different things are coming and breath works and then moans. And then people are like, it was a journey at that point. And just like in an ayahuasca circle, you hear the sounds of purging, you'll hear the sounds of what the shamans would call ‘trabajo’, the work, the work of that experience. Like that's a beautiful aspect of this is it's in some aspects so gentle and so sweet, but in other aspects so powerful that you were just riding people through this thing and it was just building and building and then the soft periods where you get to integrate and then rebuilding again into the pulsing heart. And then of course, landing with that beautiful collaborative track you guys have sitting around the fire, which Ram Dass is channeling that divine father energy of one of the true enlightened mystics of our era, of our time. And it was really like a mind bending experience to have you open and lead us through this interactive cosmic journey on your own and Ram Dass's voices introduced. And then John drops in with this, now we're on a whole other type of rocket ship. And this whole thing is a spaceship and we're all entering into this astral cosmic journey together. I mean, it was something. 

EAST: Yeah, and then the bookend was the improvisational piano piece. Which blew my mind. 

JON: Yeah, that was a surprise to me as well. So I think it was like two days before the event you texted me to say, if there was a piano, would you play it? I hadn't thought of that. But then, I mean, first and foremost, that's what I've done my whole life. Since I was like three or four, I played the piano. And I just thought, wouldn't it be nice to just creep on stage when no one can actually see that I'm there. 

EAST: It was nice. 

JON: And join in with the end of sit around the fire

AUBREY: And so seamless too. It seems like everything you do is, and you said the word craftsmanship yesterday, like sound craftsmanship. It's so immaculately crafted. And even how you blended your own piano with the end. And I was like, that was impressive. 

JON: What's a 

AUBREY: beautiful 

JON: What a beautiful old instrument. Was it like 60, 70 years old or something like that? 

EAST: Older. I think it's a hundred years old, but I'm sure it has been worked on, but it's an old piano. Because it was last minute, we didn't have a lot of options and I wasn't going to have a piano at this show for various reasons. We have been having them at the shows and then it just hit me. It's like, I really feel like we should do this, but I didn't want to bring it unless we both used it. 

JON: Yeah. I mean, I couldn't really not use it. 

EAST: I was really hoping you'd say yes. 

JON: But what was cool about it was that, because I'd been feeling nervous because as I was saying to you last night, this was such a private experience, this making of this album. Obviously, as an artist, you always go to this transition. You make something which is coming from your deepest inner stuff, process through everything you've been through. And then one day you're like, okay, here it is, everyone. And that has normally felt quite like a celebration. Not an easy thing, but like a triumphant moment because it would be, my normal shows, my previous albums, like all the big tracks are heavy techno and they're danceable and it's all about jumping around and maybe more of an MDMA thing. So you do a gig and you're just like, yeah, this is fucking great. People like that drop and obviously it had the spiritual overtones. I liked the idea for years of blending the sneaking in the spirituality into dance music of which has a lot of crossover anyway. And of course, particularly in tribal drumming type stuff, it's not separate. But this one, I just took all of that away. So I was nervous to share it. And I thought I was nervous about the fact that we were going to do public speaking because that's not my thing, but turned out I was nervous about people hearing this record because I could, on a deeper level, like not up here, but down here, I could feel that everyone was truly listening. And what they're truly listening to is the deepest thing in myself. It's like fucking hell, what have I done? I've shown my whole hand. And what actually chilled me out was playing the piano and going back to what I've always done, and that was 100 percent improvised. And I found out from my wonderful sound engineer, Dana, that it's been recorded too. So yeah, we can share it after this. 

AUBREY: Amazing!

EAST: Fantastic.

AUBREY: It was such a beautiful way to integrate after such a Powerful experience. Now, granted, my experience was particularly powerful because of the ketamine that I dissolved in my mouth but nonetheless, sober or not, it was such a journey and to have that nice soft landing to help us all come home in a very sweet way. Because even Ram Dass's words. The words are so potent themselves. It is in a way a beautiful integration, but even still, you're still digesting, like let the judgments and opinions of the mind be judgments, opinions of the mind, and you exist beyond that. And you're like, damn, that's a lot, whatever that is, it's perfect, but it's still like, there's an intensity to it and a gravity to it. But to have the sweetness of the piano at the end. It's a really nice way to do it. And then of course we got on stage and talked and I thought that was really nice as well. 

JON: Because you were high. 

AUBREY: I was so high. 

JON: I've done a lot of interviews in the last 20 years, but never looked–

EAST: Win the prize, the highest interviewer. 

JON: Yeah. Looked into the eyes of the one asking the questions 

EAST: In front of an audience too. It's amazing. 

JON: But it was cool because we had a fun chat.

AUBREY: Well, I felt like I at least was in resonance with everybody else.

JON: The heart was open. It added. Honestly, it added because it certainly made me relaxed. And I felt like I was sharing some quite personal stuff in front of loads of people. Again, never done it before. But to go back to the point you were saying about the intensity of the record, like, I like the idea that it can be used as a friend of mine said he was like working with it on in the background, like at first my ego was like, how dare you? This must be worshipped. That was just after you finish, you're very precious about an arm and I'm sure you feel that, but part of letting go of it is moving beyond that. Now I love the fact that someone can use it in that way, but one of the real goals of it is to say to people that this genre of music, whatever genre that is. It can be very intense. It's as intense as a techno album for me. And it's like the loud passages are as loud as anything else I've done. Possibly louder because you don't have to fit in all that kick drum room. There's more room for subs and drones. And you talked about the low end, so much bass and the bass that was rattling the walls in a way, which I loved because it was in resonance, like the building was joining in. But I guess, I don't know why, I mean, I don't make easy music. You can listen to it in an easy way, but I think for whatever reason, what's coming out at the moment has some long, very long, intense sections, which are followed, like you say, by breath. And they build up again and it's as much of a mystery to me really.

EAST: A lot of your music plays around with a low end that I think a lot of people don't get to really get the full gift of all that wonderful juice. When I first heard ‘sit around the fire’, I heard it on my studio system and I was hearing this beautiful sub pad at the beginning. And I was like, that's so bold to put that in because a lot of people won't hear it, but it's a really integral part of the feeling of the song. And then last night, I mean, in spades, we're getting all of that low mid and low end stuff. 

JON: So that sound is a recording of just outside my window. It's 

EAST: It’s just London streets, you said? 

JON: Not London streets, it's like Surrey. Where my mum used to live, I just took some field recordings because she lived near the River Thames, and I just had that sound named as outdoors. But over the years I've processed it in loads of different ways, so it was a very particular moment that stretches back, I don't know, like 15 years ago or something. But I put it in different effects for each time I use it and it just manipulated it. What I wanted was this feeling of like a fire basically, but a good fire, not an out of control raging fire, but something that grounds you as well. I didn't just want to come in with your voice and our voice combined, which we have in there as well, but just that. Yeah, it's like a very low tone, which I think settles you, even if you can't hear it, it's doing something maybe. 

AUBREY: I mean, that's one thing that both of you guys have in common is you use a lot of instrumentation of the world, of the natural world, and you do it in different ways. But there's just a real beauty of being able to capture an experience of nature, a moment in time, the vibration, the resonance of what the universe is playing in a particular place. And it's not just a recording of the sounds. It's a recording of the essence of that thing. And that's why it's just so beautiful. And then you can take that essence and then manipulate it and modify it into ramping up the intensity of that essence. So it's not just the casual essence of that. It's the essence of that in the strongest concentrated form, like boiling down ayahuasca from a giant vat into like a thick black brew that just blasts you off. Like all of a sudden it's outside instead of just outside. You know what I mean? It's like, it's this different thing, but both of you play with that in a beautiful way. Your coyote has become this signature thing. 

EAST: I use it a lot. I definitely should swap out some sounds. 

AUBREY: I kind of want a coyote soundboard for myself.

EAST: I like that one a lot, it’s true.

JON: It was great when that came because I haven't seen you play before and I was like, oh, Coyote's cool. 

EAST: Sometimes I look at some of those samples in the live setting and I'm like, man, I've had that one on there for quite a while. The greatest hits of nature.

JON: Have you ever pressed the wrong one at a really sensitive moment? 

EAST: Yeah. I mean, last night it was so dark too. I was having a hard time seeing what I was playing. And it’s like, sometimes that happens and you never know what's going to come out. But that's part of the beauty of having it be open ended like that. Like you have to trigger things and create things because it always is a little different and you have the freedom to make it completely different, which is really nice. 

AUBREY: One of the things, I just sat with an incredible shaman, maestro Lando Chuandama from the Quechua tradition. And we're in Costa Rica, in the jungle of Costa Rica. And obviously every jungle has its own sounds, but this has its own jungle and ocean sounds that are there. And so he would roll in this carpet of Icaros as we're in. And just this intensity of this thick, rich carpet of sound that he would bring through. And then pause and integrate. And it was all of the sounds of the crickets and all of the sounds, the wind and the sounds of the ocean that also provided this backdrop and doing it in the absence of that. It's just not anywhere the same.

EAST: That’s why I started making those breaks in those records, like music for mushrooms with the sphere records, because it was from ceremonies where that's what they would do. And they would have these breaks between the Akaros and it was the natural sounds, and it was so important. It was sort of like this important bridge to the next room you're about to go into. And all those things I felt like were not accidents, like they were forms of technology they'd figured out over many years, like, this helps, this is a way of doing things, the tempo of the ceremony, and I wanted to learn from that and say, well, there's probably a good reason why they figured this out. Maybe I can incorporate this into a more modern context. 

AUBREY: And when I listen to music for mushrooms and there's those breaks, I think I commented maybe even on another podcast. It was like, how did he know? How did Krishna know that that's what I needed right at this moment in time? And both of you have done this in different ways. There's almost like a vibrato to the whole thing, which is the way that mushrooms work in the body. It kind of vibrates part of your Soma in a way that the cells are kind of moving in a different way. In the trees themselves are vibrating as your body, everything is in this resonance and the whole album has that. And then these nice, like beautiful pauses. And so you created, of course, music for mushrooms, and then you've created music for psychedelic therapy, but the length of it being an hour versus the length of yours, which is what, five hours? 

EAST: Yeah, but the new albums in a soundtrack for the Psychedelic Practitioner volume two. And I just find it amazing that we both essentially were doing the same thing at the same time independently. Like we're both made psychedelic guidance albums, I guess, maybe it's a pandemic thing. I don't know. I mean, it was for me. 

AUBREY: Or it's a collective desire. Both of you guys are listening, your antenna is up and the world is, I strongly believe, saying, hey, we need these medicines and we need the tools to help bring people to this because we have to come to a state where we collapse the polarity, we get to a united polarity, we see each other beyond the identity, beyond our differences and creeds and opinions about whatever thing is happening in the culture. And these are the tools that are creating the backdrop that's helping. And I think you guys are both absolutely on the pioneering front end of this, because there's been other music that's been nice in ceremony before, like the Devi prayer is lovely to play in a variety of different things. And Craig–

JON: Craig, Chris. It’s amazing.

AUBREY: He's very good, but nonetheless, it's a song here and a song here. It's not woven with the intention of this is for ceremony. And I love how obvious you guys were in the naming of it too. You're like, no, no, no, let's be straight up here. This is for this.

JON: Yeah. I really went for that, but that wasn't a choice. Honestly, it wasn't a choice. I suppose my kind of more spiritual experiences with Ketamine have been mostly this year. I've had them before, but intentional deep dive experiences have been this year. And when I was in the early stages of making this record, I was listening through to tracks in progress, but also things like Debby Prayer and some sort of Kundalini and other types of mantra music and some just general songs that I love. And then a few of the Taios pieces. And it was a strong dose. And I just returned and it was as if it was written in front of me music for psychedelic therapy, you have no choice, you have to call it that and then there was a part of me resisting that because I don't want to box it in a way. And I'm obviously always going to be saying to people, it's also a piece of music and you can listen to it any way you like, but that title was no choice because I had experiences. So my good friend, Dr.Rosalind Watts, who is the clinical lead on the psilocybin trials that we had in London, Imperial College, we became friends a while ago. And she asked me to help with some of the track selections that they were using for their depression patients. And she had picked some amazing stuff and she had some East Forest in there. In fact, that was how I first heard of your stuff in 2018. 

EAST: No way. 

JON: Yeah. That was my first encounter with you. And is there a track called Grounded? 

EAST: Yeah, I think so. 

JON: Radha is nodding. You're not sure. 

EAST: Yes, there is. It's from a ceremony. It's a ceremony track. 

JON: Really love it, anyway. So yeah, we put some of my longer form stuff in there and generally just, we're talking about together. And I think, it wasn't a conscious thing at the time, but part of me was just like, we need not to have a hundred different musicians. 

EAST: Yes. This is it.

JON: Six hours. I mean, obviously I'd love for this album to be six hours long. It's just that it might take me six more years. 

AUBREY: Great. You got more time.

JON: I will do volume two. I mean, that is definitely the plan. But just this idea of having one energy hold–

EAST: That's the key. 

JON: And in electronic modern music that isn't really a thing, because the long form stuff and you've started doing that and I'm gonna keep doing it. 

EAST: The only way it's been feasible for me to do though is by improvising it live in ceremonies and since recording it because it's true the task of sitting in the studio and thinking I need to make five hours of music or two or one. That's just enormous. But something about we'll open up to the improvisational space in a ceremony. It adds a kind of freedom. Of course, you could say to yourself, maybe none of this will work out and that's fine, but let's just record it and see what happens. And the album was five ceremonies that were virtual on YouTube live, which I never would have done, but because of the pandemic, the same friend, Louis, who 13 years ago said, “we're doing one virtually.” And I said, “I've never live streamed before.” He's like, “well, it's Saturday. We'll figure it out. Don't worry about it.” And we just did it, and it turns out there are advantages. 

JON: What's the significance of it being Saturday? My eye off. It's Saturday, we do things on Saturday. It's the day where we do things.

EAST: Yeah, exactly. 

AUBREY: Sunday is a day of rest. 

JON: Yeah, Saturday we do new things. 

EAST: But it allowed, you start just having you record them all night, you've got 25 hours of playing and in there, there's probably a few hours of some really magical, like something came through that's from the medicine. And I would love to see that from you too. Like what we saw on the improvisation on the piano. If I gave you the landscape to say, okay, we're going to do a two hour ceremony with an audience and they're going to be doing it just like they were. Just let it come through whatever it wants to come through. There would be so many gems. 

AUBREY: There's also a way I think to weave in that piece that I was talking about, the bowl piece. It's an unbelievable 30 minute chunk. That's this really powerful cosmic journey. This doesn't fit exactly in the same hour piece. Right. But a way to bridge those would be really beautiful.

EAST: Before and after. Yeah. 

JON: So. What is really interesting is that that was supposed to be on the album and so there's track one, Welcome, which we talked about with the ascending tones and that's very much so obviously the first track. And then if you listen carefully, the end of that track actually has a bit of the singing bowl in it.

EAST: It does? 

JON: Yeah, it's got about 20 seconds low. 

EAST: From that piece? 

JON: Well, it's the same audio. Yeah. Because I was trying to figure out whether it could flow into that. And then again, I tested the early version of the album, which had that as the second track. So you go from Welcome into Singing Bowl, into Tayos. And for some reason, I think because of that, that track Welcome has a very light energy. And for me, it's very much DMT. It's the DMT plus. That's my direct channeling of my DMT experiences. And the Singing Bowl one, after that, it felt like I'd been lifted off into this celestial heavens and then suddenly plunged into the bowels of the earth. It was like, I was blank, I was again, a strong dose and I was kind of like being ground in this bowl in the ground. It felt healing, cause I got to the, cause you know how the track kind of lightens towards the end and the main drones, the main singing bowl drones kind of fade away and it gets a little gentler. But the main chunk of it, when framed in a very different context, with a very light beginning, was grueling. Like it was, it was, and I'm not against grueling. 

AUBREY: We know. We're aware. 

JON: There's plenty of gruel for everyone. 

AUBREY: Gruel the gruel around everyone. 

JON: Slopping out some spiritual gruel for you. But like this, it was too much and it made the album 85 minutes long, which presents various other problems. And I wouldn't have been worried about that if it had worked, but basically I cut it and figured out a bridge between that and tiles. And then it just became itself. Then it became an album. But also you mentioned earlier about how the appearance of that track was synchronous with you starting to explore with Ketamine yourself. And I don't know why exactly, how this happened, but I finished the piece and I hadn't been in touch with you for a while. We'd all been going through a pandemic and we'd met like two years ago, I think. And I hadn't been in touch much. And then I was just like, I have to send this to Aubrey for some reason. And I emailed it to you and you like straight away, you listened to it on Kesmin. I was like, okay, that was clearly supposed to happen. 

AUBREY: Prior to that, I was fumbling around with different tracks and it was like, this one kind of works. This dispense of meditation kind of works, but why does he change his voice like that? I'll think about all these things, but that kind of worked. And like, I'd have all of these things that were like, kind of worked in this thing and then that one dropped in. And it was a very important time for me because that's when I was transitioning. I had gotten habituated to using Xanax to fall asleep. So I was conditioned to do that and I was going through with my partnership with Vylana and some of her healing work. I transitioned from that and ketamine was a huge ally in that process because even if I wasn't sleeping, I could have a journey, put on that track and then I could get into that kind of deep theta delta recovery cycle. So even if I was sleeping four hours a night, which was happening, I could jump into that journey with ketamine and I could feel restored and human in my heart and mind and spirit would get aligned. So not only was it something that was interesting and magical, which it really, really was. It was the first time I'd found sound mixed with medicine where energy was moving to different parts of my body. Like the way that the drone would like, you're like, Whoa, it's going to my feet, like, wow, it's going. And then all of a sudden, and I'm upside down now, upside down completely now. But nonetheless, like I was so deep in it that it was really incredibly restorative for my health. And we've been talking about ketamine for the psycho spiritual journeying effects, which is incredibly powerful. And I've had a lot of manifestation, spiritual downloads, but it was legalized for the function of a person's health. And really that was a deep part of that process as well. So whatever was guiding you to make it also was guiding you to send it. Or maybe it was my soul, like, Hey man, like, please, like the Aubrey guy needs this, like really needs this. 

JON: And I don't often do that. I don't just send unreleased things to people I've met, once. It's just like, I'm gonna do it. And I sent it to maybe two or three other people. But yeah, it is interesting because on its own, that piece is supposed to stand alone. It didn't blend into anything else, but it could be really nice as a bridging thing–

EAST: Yeah. And I just wanna go back to the title though. I think it's really, really important that you called it what you did, because think about it, if it was another title, just like another album with just a name. We might not be having this conversation in a sense, because people could miss its potential as a tool. Of course it's great music, of course you can use it off label, and people will, and that's fantastic. But the people who want to use it on labels wouldn't necessarily know. And now people who might not even know you Are going to learn about this in this burgeoning field that's growing so quickly and because there aren't many tools out there as you said and very few with a singular artistic voice, especially very few that are of, such ilk as yours and so crafted so well. So I thought that was a bold move and I certainly had done it myself. So I was like, I'm so glad you did, but I wanted to just honor that you did that because it’s kind of would have been easier not to. 

JON: Yeah, and there were some people trying to persuade me not to. 

EAST: I would imagine so. 

JON: They all changed their mind though, I have to say. In fact, the record label was amazing though.

EAST: Were they really? 

JON: Yeah, yeah. 

EAST: That's so awesome. 

JON: I mean, they're a cool record label. Domino was cool. 

AUBREY: Good sign for the times. 

EAST: They’re the best. Domino's the best. 

JON: Yeah. It was a great thing. So I'm now completely comfortable with that. But I think it was also really just, you've often talked on this podcast, which I listen to. But about how often you'll talk about things because you're giving a talk to yourself, almost.

AUBREY: You're pretty much always, this is a deep secret. The deep Aubrey secret is that every product I've created is something for me. And every talk I give is something that's going to help. And it's of course, I'm thinking of other people too, but it's because I need it. And I recognize my state of inner being with everybody else. If I need it. Everybody needs it, and if they need it, I need it, like we're so less separate than we believe we are. So yeah, I know that if I'm serving myself in a deep way, it's going to serve people. Otherwise, I'm just guessing. I'm like, well, this doesn't really work for me, but I think it's gonna work for them. How the fuck do I know? 

JON: Exactly, and if you make music like that, it's terrible. People can see through it and non musical people, people who don't even listen that deeply, it just doesn't resonate. Authenticity you can detect on different levels. But basically this stuff is all my way of living, my way of understanding the world and tools that I need. And I've found that the music didn't exist that was perfect for my ketamine experience. There were playlists of different people, but I need to make it to hear it myself. And it's quite weird to say this publicly, but the first experiences I had when it was finished, which is so amazing, and it sounds like I'm just bigging up my album, but it didn't sound anything like it came from me, and I had no idea where, it was like, this is the plants, because even though it's ketamines taking me there, I had five years of regular DMT experiences, which I've now realized because I've now stopped doing that and I've now realized that I don't have to do that anymore because the point of that was that energy was trying to get into this music and that energy was trying to come out into the world. And it leads me to quite a cool story, which I'll share. So my probably best friend in the world is a guy called Dan and he plays some of the synths on the album, some of the more generative, unusual, esoteric sounds on Welcome and a couple of other tracks. And we have shared DMT experiences since 2015. We discovered it together. I first heard of it in 2001 and I thought, that's something I will never be ready to do. And after 15 years of meditating, I was ready to do it. And dived in deep and we've all had that experience here, I guess, but fucking hell, it's still processing the first one, let alone the following.

AUBREY: And just to be clear, these experiences are NN DMT experiences? 

JON: Yes. Pure 15 minute, crystal type thing. And yeah, obviously it goes without saying, I don't recommend it. I don't not recommend it, but–

AUBREY: That's the only place to be. Yeah. 

JON: I was just going to say that. But anyway, the first one I had was, it's literally heaven. I just went straight to the deepest, safest, most perfect love God ever that I could ever and have ever experienced since. Like nothing has ever been like that. And I now like to look back at this and try to figure out the patterns and the meanings behind these trips. But that first one was kind of, you need to come in here, what's going to come next is really important. And of course, they got harder and harder. And maybe my fear increased. I don't know, but it was all from the mimosa bark. And it started to seem to me like it was the mimosa spirit that was interacting with me and with Dan on each occasion. We would see the same kind of things and she's this extraordinary geometric fractal goddess that’s like, in you, and becomes you, and you know how it is, that kind of stuff. 

EAST: I don't know what it is. 

JON: No, exactly. The words don't work there. 

AUBREY: Describing it is an interesting task.

JON: The colours, we've managed to capture some of the colours outside, but they're never as vivid. But anyway, I had increasingly scary experiences. I was never confronted with anything hostile, but I just got more and more scared of each one. But Dan, my friend, is more bold and would go for a heavier dose and he'd had many on his own as well and he would often get these very clear messages he'd come out with like, he works on the land, he has a small holding farm and he looks after his family and lives quite off grid and he would get quite clear messages about things to do in his life. I would just get these goddess investigations. I'd be filled with music and obviously that was the purpose, but I wasn't like, Oh, this is how you resolve this relationship. It didn't provide me with way too out there for that. But anyway, so one time we were doing it together and he would always go first because he's again, bolder. And he'd had many experiences by this point. And so he took the dose, maybe 30 milligrams, something like that. It's quite high, I think. And then as usual, the goddess comes towards him and then she goes, this guy pointing at me. So this is not for you today. You've got to help this guy get this music out here. So it just literally comes with and just turns, just takes a swerve and points at me. And he, like, after, when he recovered, he was like, Hmm, that was interesting. She didn't want to talk to me. She was like, it was a very, very clear message that he had to help me in, we don't know exactly what ways. And now I can look back. And I thought it was, to do with Singularity, my previous album, which definitely has a strong DMT influence, but now I realize it was entirely about this one and the way in which he helped me was he provided some of the sounds, but also the love and the support and the confidence to make what is an unusual album, but also the support through the DMT that through helping me and sitting with me through those increasingly scary experiences. And then one day when I was done with it, that's when the album suddenly got written and I look back and it's like that was school. I was in school to make this record. But it's so cool to think that that happened in that way. 

AUBREY: We have so much more help seen and unseen than we recognize. And this is the thing that I can attest to over and over again. It's that we think we might be alone. We think that the odds are against us. It's all daunting, but we're not taking into account this gigantic synchronous support from the universe, whatever you want to call it, whatever your cosmology and whatever your paradigm allows you to name it. And normally it doesn't matter, but we're supported in some very deep ways. And I'm sure we all could recount countless stories as yours was of key moments where it's like, well. I got helped, like I got helped a lot. And there's the humility to that, which is like, this isn't all me, hardly, I don't know how much of it is me actually, because every time I really take a clear look, it's like, I got so much support and so much help in this process and sure, I made some choices and I'll give myself some credit, but it was like, we're really guided.

JON: Yeah, and I feel like recounting that particular story, it's important for me to point out that I didn't then start to consider myself as a sort of unique or special person, only I could do this. It wasn't so much that it was a combination of the fact that I had an audience and that I'm having these experiences. And through my interest in psychedelics, I'd met all the people that could perhaps help this get out. And it always goes back to that thing of being a channel rather than anything else

AUBREY: Your mastery of being able to create sound. A lot of people might have that urge, but unless they've cultivated the 10,000 plus hours of being able to translate that into something at the level that you're able to, they can try their best. And that's all really important and it's all super valuable, but the skill sets that you have then allow you to translate that into something else. So it's not like this pure, your mind goes blank and you just channel something. And I didn't even know what levers I was pushing and I didn't even know the software, but the guides told me how to use this, it doesn't work like that. Like if you're going to write something, you need the vocabulary. When things come through me, they come through words, but my deep practice with words and poetry and writing has allowed me, so that I can take the energy. It always comes with an energy and I'll get the energy and then I'll know the words will just flow. They'll flow right out because I feel the energy of it. And that's the gift. And then my own, holding of my intellect, everything that I've accumulated then just translates that in a way that actually crystallizes it in the 3d. 

JON: Yeah. And it's interesting because for me, when you talk about those 10,000 hours, like for me, the desire to get as good as I can at sound design and creating sounds and dimensional music in particular, which is why I described this as. Comes from, well, the fuel for that in the early years was all the ego. I had many people, probably everyone had a rough time at school and it wasn't at the right place perhaps. And had a desire to be cool, had a desire to be popular, wanted money, wanted a career and also passionately loved and lived and breathed music. So the two things work together, but the amount of hours I spent, many of them in like, living in my mum's house in her attic. Just learning how to make all this stuff with no training, just time and failing. And it's almost like you have to learn how to control that totally before you can learn how to let go of it almost. Because this album, yeah I know all the software, but really it was about letting go of the control of the music. It's quite hard to explain this, but there's no grid on any of the tracks. So there's no tempo, there's no marker points, there's no rhythm. But instead of that, there's the things that landed where they were supposed to land. It's quite hard to explain, but one example is there's this track called Love Flows Over Us in Prismatic Waves. I don't like saying these titles out loud because they're supposed to be read, but I've said it. It's on the album. I like the titles, they're just very like, that is what it is when I hear it. That's what it is. So that's what I have to call it. This is the policy is total honesty with this one, but I had this kind of drone sound going and it was something that was playable. It was based on the unicorder sample, which is a nil form, but it's a beautiful piano thing, but has been processed beyond recognition. So you would never know that, which is my policy–

EAST: On the distractor machine. 

JON: Yeah. So I was playing this sound and it was like, I was finding it really beautiful, but it's a little bit electronic. And I was drinking a beer and. Beer was an important medicine, interestingly, in the making of this album, because, let's remember this was like mid pandemic, mid winter, everything's shut. I was also going through a real heartbreak, and I found about six o'clock, if I were to bring beer into the mix, I would get three, four more hours of Some of the best stuff happened, it may not be ideal for my body, but fuck it, this was delicious. Delicious, like nice bits are not, whatever.

EAST: Well, that makes all the difference, then it's okay.

JON: It doesn't have any extra shit in, but whatever. You don't need to get into the ingredients.

AUBREY: And also the energetics of the love that's poured into a certain thing. We're making energy music. Like, the energetics of what you're ingesting count in a certain way.

JON: Yeah. So I would get this boost and euphoria that would just kind of keep me going. And all that felt important in that era, it's an unforgettable era in so many ways, but all that felt important was to keep going. So I didn't look after myself as well as I should, but it didn't feel like it mattered. And looking back, I wouldn't change it. But the reason I mention it is because I always drink out of a glass. I like the vessel to be right with all drinks. I don't know if you have your favorite coffee mug. I mean, it's not a rare thing, but it's very important for you to have this nice glass. So I had my studio, poured the beer, listening to this drone sound, thinking it needed a bit of life. And I just happened to flick the beer glass and it was the exact note that was missing from the court. And had I had one more sip before flicking it, it would have been like, but because it was perfect, I just grabbed a mic immediately. And if you play that track, you can hear it really clearly, it happens within the first two minutes of that track. And then I put it across the keyboard. So great thing about the software users, you can map a sound across the keyboard very easily. So I could then play that beer note on a different key. And the whole thing just came from the level, the liquid was at, at the time. Just one, there's millions of examples of that happening across the album, but if you're just open to that, like what is going on in the room, what is going on outside the building, sometimes you capture a bird going past or whatever, but it's generally supposed to be on there for me anyway. And it's such a personal, tiny, trivial little thing, but it's one of my favorite sounds on the album. 

AUBREY: I want to go back to a philosophical point that you were making about the ego, because I think this is important to touch on. A lot of people denigrate the ego. As if it's a bad thing, as if this is something that's just here to be transcended and it has no value and it's always the enemy. I mean, there's even a book, ego is the enemy. And I don't particularly like that title or that premise because I think it is a very powerful and important and useful tool, more useful at certain times than others. Like without your ego, as the start of your journey, would you have become the musician that you are now that's capable now of stepping aside from the ego? You don't eradicate it, but stepping aside and creating something even more beautiful. No, you would try to step aside, but you wouldn't have had the skills and the dedication, that fiery determination to get there. Same with me. I needed my ego as this fuel source to get me to the place where I am now, where now I have the ability to occasionally, if I'm in grace, can step aside and transcend it, but it's this very important fuel source and I'd open that up to you as well. Your own journey with how your ego has been an ally. So the opposite of ego is the enemy. Ego is an ally and here's where it also has its faults. But here's the ego as an ally. 

EAST: Fire Metaphor is a good one because it is a fuel and if we honor the fact that it's a kind of the engine that keeps us moving forward, there's probably a reason why we have these predilections in our personalities, growing up and you honor that. It's like part of the thing that keeps burning the engine in a way and I think about the line sitting around the fire and it gets even deeper for me, like ego is part of that fire. Like you're burning through the ego itself, but that's also, in some ways, the recognition of it is the burning of it, but then that creates the fuel to create. And creation is sort of the essence of why we're here. And all the forms that we do it, not just beautiful albums, but all the things we do is like, that is God seeing God, we are creating with every moment. And so in that sense, I had that revelation on one of my first ayahuasca experience, and it's in that song, Grandmother's Fear, that I released a long time ago, where at the end it says, for the ego to be teammates and as opposed to enemy, that's something I felt like my ego is swimming around me in the journey. And sometimes it would grab me and I'd go on this journey and then 30 minutes later be like, Oh man, I was just all wrapped up in that. Let me get back to them. Well, there it is again. And it was like this masterful skill where it could really pull me away. But I was like, I don't want to push you away. I want to be a teammate with you. And I can have these cosmic feelings and revelations at the same time that the ego helps me be on this earth and make decisions and be discursive and that's important. And so I want to work together in that way. But maybe in some way when we witness it, as Ram Dass would say, we kind of watch that show going by. Then suddenly we're able to use the ego as a tool. Maybe it's like a linebacker or it's something, or it's like a log we put on the fire and it's not being destroyed, but it's creating more heat.

JON: What's a linebacker? 

EAST: What's a linebacker, football

AUBREY: A tenacious defensive player on the football field.

EAST: Looks like Justin Ren or these, all these guys. 

AUBREY: It's bigger than me, but yeah,

JON: It's more not like me then.

AUBREY: Like a wide receiver type of vibe. 

JON: That sounds like a nice job.  

AUBREY: Yeah, it's such an important point. I mean, there's a reason why we have an ego. It's to separate us so that we can be a different articulation without it. Without the one that says, I am not everything, we collapse back into unicity again. Anyways, it's this important way that allows us free will. It allows us all these things, but the skill to be able to use it in a productive way rather than in a destructive way. In order to master that level, it requires a level of separation. You have to be able to witness the ego and then to witness the ego, you have to have some foothold in an identity that's beyond it. And that's what all the great mystical teachings are about. Practice. And I see this going more because the concept makes sense. Witness the ego, but to go through, this was happening last night, in the journey as well, different ways in which I was wondering, Oh man, did I say that wrong thing? And was that weird? Oh man, I forgot to tell people to be quiet in the middle of the thing and I would go in and I was like, stop, stop. It's all right. And I would watch these different aspects. And that skill, as you were alluding to, the more you practice it, the better you are at it so that you can just watch it softly rather than getting engaged and sucked into it. That's where the challenge becomes is, when we become the ego without any awareness that there's anything that exists beyond it, then we're in trouble. But if we can use it as a teammate. Not the same, not exactly the same thing, then we're like, alright, I see you buddy, I see what you're there, and I hear you, and I don't disagree, but we're gonna go this way. That's really sovereignty. 

JON: I like to think of it as Parenting a child almost, it doesn't know better like, yeah, sometimes in this metaphor I'm creating which might not work, the child is in charge of the car. But sometimes it's–

EAST: How entitled is the child? 

JON: Exactly. But sometimes you just need to go, I'm going to step in here because what we'd like. I had an interesting example of that this morning. So we went to Justin’s place and had an ice bath. It's amazing. One of my favorite things to do and felt absolutely blissful after that. I needed it because I drank a load of beer last night to come down off the show and I felt obviously cleansed and brilliant. And then I don't look at instagram very often, but for some reason I went and looked. I'd had to postpone all my European tour because of COVID stuff is impossible to freely travel around right now. And someone was really angry about me postponing the Oslo show and I just saw this comment and I was immediately thrown into that, but it wasn't my fault. Like, and he was like, why couldn't you just come out for this? We don't have restrictions here. They're not understanding the mechanics of trying to move eight people around at this time. And it took me maybe three minutes, it's good, the time has reduced a lot. 

EAST: Yeah, that's it, that's awesome. 

JON: And I think that's because I just got out of the ice bath and I was surrounded by new friends and it was a beautiful sunny day and there are many good things but I fully went in there for a minute and I was like, oh my goodness, and it still gets you and it's always as intense, for me anyway, it's just hopefully the duration of effect reduces over time. And I realize that that will never not be the case. 

EAST: You just gotta stay out of the comments, man.

JON: I do in general, that's the thing. It's really not something I would ever do, but I think I don't know. 

EAST: I feel you. I mean, I've been there for sure. Every minutes 

AUBREY: Everybody has, and certain ones bite a little harder.

JON: They do if they're not fair, I guess, and then–

AUBREY: The injustice then becomes a trigger of it and some slight agreement that you have with it, a little bit of guilt that has to kind of agree with something. 

EAST: And that's the truth. Yeah. 

AUBREY: So it's really the case with, and people worry about this in a lot of shamanic circles as well. Like there's these movies where there'll be some demonic possession where some demon will just come out of the blue and attach itself and possess somebody. But you really talk to the great masters and they're like, no, no, no. Like there has to be resonance. There has to be resonance in the individual for a dark energy to stick. And some of the great masters that I've worked with, they have no concern at all. Like, I'm like, well, you're breathing in this energy. Like Maestro Orlando, for example, in his supplado and his healings, he'll blow in, or Benteada, he'll blow in tobacco or cinnamon and then he'll immediately go. And like suck it up, I think it's called Chupar, but Chupar is a little more specific, but he sucks up the energy and then he'll cough or vomit or purge or burp or whatever. And he just goes through this process and I got to talk to him. I'm like, well, what do you do about it? Are you worried about any of the energy sticking to you? He's like, no, no, no. Like I'm taking it immediately because I know that there's no resonance for that energy in me at all. So while I can take it and then move it, it's not going to stick. Like it just won't stick. Same with the 5 It won't stick to me at all, because there's no part of me that agrees with that energy that exists, that's the thing that it could collect in. And I think that's the same way with when we're talking about the energy that we might get from one of these comments, like if we have a little bit of agreement to it, a little bit of our own self judgment, a little bit of our own self hate, a little bit of our own guilt, then all of a sudden there's resonance. And that thing's going to stick a lot longer and maybe add another pebble to our self judgment recrimination pile. But if we've done that internal work, it's like, oh, whatever, and just move past it. There's no resonance. 

EAST: You gotta have time of reflection to balance out the ego in a sense. It's all just like the Yin Yang of it. And so if most of what we do in our lives these days is feeding our egoic identity. And so when you are on social media a lot, and really in the weeds of the comments, you're just in that world, it's just all about essentially ego. And we're not–

JON: And no consequence for the person that's written it.

EAST: Right, you have to do things that feed the other side

AUBREY: The consequence I think is felt deeply. Underneath the surface, the interbeing is unavoidable. The fact that if you do something to someone else, you're doing it to you is a universal law. They just might not feel it because it's not in their awareness, but every time you do something hurtful to another person, you're hurting yourself. You cannot escape it. Karma is instant. It's not something that happens later. I think this is another misnomer. No, it's instant. It's just on the subtle body that you can't feel, but don't worry. It'll be there for you to deal with when you’re done.

EAST: It’s about being cognizant of your word and all shapes and forms. Just for the power of it as a matter of leading your life. And the effect it has on you. 

JON: In general, it's a thing I just don't engage with and I do very little posting and I've been lucky to be able to avoid it overall. I don't think it's necessarily inherently a bad thing at all, but I know that I'm too sensitive to take it. It could get in my way of doing something useful. And as long as I can persuade people to listen to my stuff somehow and come to the shows then I don't need to engage with something that I don't inherit. I think it's not necessarily a general force for good. 

AUBREY: So let's try on this idea. It's not something that I have a lot of practice in but just thinking about it. Just as with the ice bath, it's going to be cold. And that hormetic stressor is going to create an adaptation that's positive. It's going to make you stronger. A lot of times we look at the comments without any intention, hoping that they're positive. Maybe kind of looking for the negative one. 

JON: You skim through the positives. They're all good and then you find the one asshole. 

AUBREY: Of course. So we do that, but we don't do it with any kind of ceremonial intent. Now I would suppose, just from thinking about it, that if you went into that, had a centering, much like Radha did for us, prior to us getting on this podcast, a centering, an intentional centering practice, where you're saying, I'm going in, and I'm going into this energy, and I'm going make myself impervious in a way by feeling this and knowing that I'm strong enough to transmute it. And watching the way that my ego reacts and using it as the iron that's sharpening your iron, using it as that force. I think you could potentially make real productive work out of doing it, but that's the difference between doing something unconsciously and doing something with full conscious intent. And I haven't tried that, but anybody listening who finds that curious, try that. Try that, like it's an ice bath. Like I'm going to go in for my ego ice bath and it's going to be gnarly, but we're going to try that on. And I'm going to see how quickly I can move that into love and self forgiveness and compassion for that other person. How deeply can I do that? It's very similar to what people will put someone that they have the hardest time loving on their altar. Ram Dass did that with Trump. Other people have done that with a variety of different people. It's like, okay, now this is the next level. It's easy to put Maharaji on my altar. I love him infinitely and unconditionally. It's instant. What about this guy? 

EAST: This is like an ice bath full of trolls, basically, to get in there with them and just be like, how long can I stick around? Just breathe through it. 

JON: Yeah, quite an image as well. You're talking like those tiny trolls. 

AUBREY: Yeah, with the ones with the hair. 

JON: Yeah, those guys are cool.

EAST: That's what internet trolls look like, I assume. 

AUBREY: That's maybe another thing.

JON: I need one of those at home. 

AUBREY: Yeah. I want to switch gears real quick. I want to talk about your metaphysical feelings about looking at a human being as a vibrational, energetic being. Because as we know, everything is both wave and particle simultaneously. So there is, of course, density. And perhaps that's because we're observing ourselves more in the particle standpoint than we are in the wave standpoint. Whatever. It feels very real to me. If I pound it on the table, it's certainly very particle-y. However, we also know that it can be expressed as a wave, and that's why when we say we're energetic beings, we're also paradoxically saying the truth because of the nature of the quantum, it is a yes and situation. Music is a wave, not a particle. So the music is interacting with the part of us, potentially. And I just want to understand from your standpoint, part of us that could be expressed as waves. And that's perhaps one of the ways that musically it's such a magical experience to engage with music. As people who are creating these experiences and truly the most profound ways. I mean, I'd add maybe a couple other people at this table of conversation, Porangui, Justin Barretta, David Block, like a couple people that I'm like, fuck you guys do, and maybe we'll all get a wizard's council together. And at some point and–

JON: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, you should check her stuff. 

AUBREY: All right. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's more. But anyway, getting this idea of like, what is the potential of not only using sound and have you spent much time thinking about this element of like, what is happening from a metaphysical standpoint when you're making this music?

JON: Well, I would be fascinated to know. I mean, I operate generally on the David Lynch principle of not really thinking about what you're doing, just letting it happen. But I like to retrospectively analyze and try and work out what's going on. But I think when you bring the particular medicine of ketamine into it, my experiences, listening to this album, as it was finished, were experience of becoming pure wave, pure light, pure being, I suppose the music was like a sort of vessel, we've all had that experience where we just don't have our bodies anymore and we are only the music. So I would love to know what's actually going on there or whether perhaps you have the answers to this. 

EAST: Well, we are both largely in the realm of instrumental music for all intents and purposes and for mostly lyricalists, you know what I mean? And I think there's something that I find really interesting about, just the way music can be trans-dimensional and it kind of builds bridges between different spaces and feelings and it just goes straight to creating emotion. And I think I've said this before– 

AUBREY: And emotion is also a wave, not a particle, right? What is emotion?

EAST: It’s like, what is love for instance and the fact that music helps engender all these different feelings. You can kind of like a recipe just like in a film score. Create different emotional states with music and it's really good at it. And it's a human condition because if you have a PhD in music or if someone who knows nothing about music, you both will respond to the same piece of music. The same way, emotionally. You just naturally have this response to music. It's something baked into what it means to be human. When you stick with instrumental spaces, largely, it's almost like it gives more room for interpretation. It's more in the myth and the metaphor. And when you get into psychedelic spaces, I feel like that's even more important because that's all that space is. It's the ineffable in between. This liminal space and the music has this ability that I also don't fully understand, but it's so clear that it's able to, it's a kind of magic almost, how it works. 

JON: It is actual magic. And I suppose hearing us talk about this, I'm thinking I would love to hear like a shamanic perspective on how this modern music is affecting the energetic body. I would love to–

EAST: Like all the play, essentially that's been happening?

JON: I mean, less specifically, like electronic based psychedelic music, which I personally think, it's just such a profoundly, it just feels like there's just such potential, that thing I was saying last night about the ability to build a universe and then enter inside of it, but what is actually going on and I'm sure there, I would love to hear from the traditional point of view, what is actually happening. What Trane Shelman would think of hearing that?

AUBREY: That's a great point because right behind me there is a Shipibo painting and all of that art that you see, that is music translated to a visual representation. They're actually– 

EAST: Their sheet music. 

AUBREY: Yeah. That's their sheet music of their ego, and that's what it appears to them.

So they're seeing it in a certain way. One commonality is there's this kind of nasal way in which they all sing their Icaros in a very particular. And they're just tapped into that frequency of that plant you go to an Aboga Shaman, again on the other side of the wall the Bwiti. It's mouth harps and these different things that are very fast paced working with the energy of that. And then it would be very interesting to hear their perspective, but I would imagine that it's something that they would just feel and what we would probably get out of, a conversation with Meister Orlando after listening to one of your album was like a nod, like, huh– 

JON: I'll take that.

EAST: There's a cultural relevance to it too. And I think it's meant to come from the culture we're in. So it can speak to the culture at large. And I think what's really interesting is like this pairing that's happening between technology, the tools we have to make music now, and really this idea of the psychedelic space. And I think what's missing and what's needed is music that speaks sort of like a new Western Shamanic tradition. And not that's ignoring, it's actually like honoring everything we know, but we kind of need these tools to speak to the average person in America who just read Michael Pollan's book. And it's like, I'm interested in this stuff. I want to do this, but I don't really know how, and we know that the music part of that is going to be a really central piece to the journey itself. Not discounting the preparation, the integration, and that sort of stuff. And so I think we need some tools that speak a musical language that's familiar to us. Electronic music is somewhat familiar to us and just chordal structures. For some people. Like a rattle or something. Although that might work just fine. It could be kind of intense for them. It’s so unfamiliar.

AUBREY: It's interesting that we're having this conversation because tonight you guys are going to get an opportunity to lay on this thing called the opus bed, which is a full conceptual haptic bed and this is like the first prototype and it's unbelievable. So you lay down on this full haptic bed and for people who don't know haptic bed, it has all of these transducers, inducers, whatever the things that make the base, the vibrational sound. 

EAST: It translates the base into vibrations. 

AUBREY: You translate the base into vibrations that you feel.

And there are all these different panels. So you can move it up and down the whole bed and it's incredibly strong. And then you have a weighted blanket over the top. So you have a weighted blanket on this haptic bed and your blindfold and they're creating these, taking music and then translating and they're just kind of figuring it out. But it's a new medium of a way that you can feel music in a different way, which is what was happening in the giant building we were in with the reverberation of everything in the size of the speakers. But how the hell do you do that at home? It's very difficult to find one of these things. They're not that common right now, but this is like an interesting thing. So I can't wait for you guys to get on it tonight, go through some of these tracks and feel like, okay, now, what about this technology layered with what you guys are able to do? And of course, get your own bed and then be able to get into the interface. And if you want to, obviously no pressure or anything, do whatever the fuck you want. You guys are doing incredible things, but it's just like another thing that's unlocking, which to me has amazing potential for both breath work, for journeys, for just meditation, because there's something so comforting, like so comforting about that vibration. Dr. Dave Rabin, who's one of the leading ketamine specialists and ketamine assisted psychotherapy. He has a watch called the Apollo watch, and Radha, you're probably familiar with the Apollo. But it sends these kind of like different pulsing vibrations on your arm. So if you feel really terrified of the dissociative nature of going into the void. Like, Oh my God, I'm going into the void. Where am I? Am I still around? Is this nice, warm, pulsing thing on your wrist? Like, Hey, it's okay. It's okay, babe. 

EAST: It's holding your hand. 

AUBREY: It's holding your hand.

And this thing is like holding your whole body. It's like all of a sudden, you're just supported, you're like, oh yeah, thank you, like, alright, I'm here. And it's very interesting, and I think this is where technology is blending, both the technology that you guys are using to create the music, but then actually the playback of the music is becoming an interesting technology through these haptic channels. So I can't wait to have two masters like yourself. 

EAST: Do you do this together at the same time?

AUBREY: There's no queen size, you can cuddle. 

EAST: Am I on, where's this weighted blanket in this picture? 

AUBREY: It's the cheese and you guys are the bugs on your grilled cheese sandwich. But yeah, I mean, it's just very cool to really think about the ways in which these technologies are available. And of course, the didgeridoo, people think, Oh yeah, it's a wonderful instrument to play to the people. No, that's not the point of the ditch. The point is that it plays you, the ditch plays you, it plays your head, it plays your body. They're playing to get themself in a trance, using themselves as an instrument. Like that's the point of that instrument. It just happens to sound cool for other people. 

EAST: That's such a space. Oh my God. 

JON: I didn’t know that. That’s amazing.

EAST: It makes sense.

AUBREY: Yeah. So this is sound. And of course, chanting like OMing, like, yeah, OM makes a cool sound. We always think of the sounds we make, like, yeah, that's good for the world who's hearing the OM. No, it's for you. It's you're making an OM because it hits you right in the chest. That's what awakens that heart shock and all these different tones. They're for us. They're like medicine for us to straighten out all of these different things. So to blend that intelligence with technology, with everything, like this is part of this new world of all of the tools that we need to shake ourselves out of the prisons that we're in. 

EAST: Yeah, I concur. And it's hard to know, like the technological things like wearable tech that maybe we could use to read biofeedback. And maybe that makes dynamic music and that stuff could work. And it's all interesting. And sometimes you think like, the thing that's tapping your arm to remind you that you're still in space in a way. There's nothing more powerful than just a good facilitator, knowing when to put their hand on your heart. And there's nothing that can beat that in a way, or there's nothing that can just be like, just being in a forest and just hearing those natural sounds and just being with it versus anything we could create sometimes. 

JON: Just imagining like a sort of creepy robo arm coming over. 

EAST: You are stressed.

JON: I will relax you.

AUBREY: Speaking of that, I'm actually working with an ayahuasca shaman who's also a composer and visual artist. And we have this idea working with this different VR company. He wants to create a virtual ceremony with music and things, but if you combine it with a wearable. Your own heart resonance, your own pulse, if you get anxious or whatever could actually change the nature of what's being fed in real time. So you're really interacting in a similar way, just visually, no medicine at all necessary, but interacting with the vision space and sound space in a way that is very much like a journey. So in a journey, that's what's happening. Our own anxiousness, our own fears, our own thoughts, they manifest in the visions that we see in the quality of the thing that we get. So there's this interesting feedback loop of working through that. You take that deep sigh of surrender and acceptance and all of a sudden your skulls turned to butterflies and you're like, Oh man, I wish I would've thought of that 10 minutes ago before I was in the wheat thresher of dead bodies, like this is way nicer to move through this and you start to learn like, okay, how do I navigate? Oh, find love even in the things that I'm scared of. And to use technology in that way could be really interesting and valuable. And I'm excited about that as we move forward. 

EAST: It's happening. There are a lot of projects going on exploring this stuff. And even spatial audio, like, I don't know, it'd be interesting to see where it goes.

AUBREY: Like the 8D, what are your thoughts on that? Like 8D spatial audio.

JON: So I'm definitely like, okay. So I was massively against the idea that there are so few companies that now control how all music is listened to. And I was so against the idea that they could just decide okay, we're not going to, stereo is a thing of the past. You now have to think, how many channels is Atmos? I don’t know, 12? 

EAST: Think it can be.

JON: Yeah. It's a very different thing. 

EAST: Not many people have that kind of system. 

JON: It sort of brings me to the point that, to what they, instead of that, are just kind of bouncing down to a binaural simulation of listening to lots of speakers when you don't have lots of speakers. And that, for some people, could then replace the mastered, finished album that you made. And that, for me, was terrifying because if I wanted it to sound binaural, I would have made it sound binaural myself.

EAST: And 99.9% of people wouldn't understand the difference between any of this, but it just affects how they feel  when they hear the music. Instead of landing how you want it to land. 

JON: And there's all talk of remixing amazing classic tracks. And then say, okay, now we can put the vocalist in the middle. Like he's in the room and the band is playing around him and it doesn't sound the same. And maybe, it may have a place, but anyway, I tried it on my album and it was great. And I think because it's non vocal and because it is dimensional and this isn't going to make sense to people just listening, but it's like moving from speakers being here, but suddenly the sounds, you're like right in the middle of the picture. I think if they're able to roll out affordable versions of these systems, then it might encourage, particularly with this genre of music, which is the only genre sort of qualified to really speak about, it could encourage a more conscious form of music listening, where listening to music is enough. Obviously there's a lot of people that do that, but there's a lot of people that don't do that. They might be encouraged to have a place in their house where they sit in a chair and they really just listen. Music is a therapist, so having heard how good it can sound when done sensitively and carefully, and really it's just about moving things from here to here, and here to here, and having the trebles moving around above you and the bass physically below you, all that stuff. There is something amazing in that. So I'm tentatively going to say I'm a fan of it. 

AUBREY: When you guys look forward, you guys have made amazing contributions to everybody who's in this space and everybody in the future who will remember these albums and be able to go back to these when you look forward to what's next? Like what's coming up? I know it's super fresh for you by the time this podcast releases, it'll be the week of your release of the album itself. And you just came out with in, which is stunning. 

EAST: It will be out by the end of October. 

AUBREY: Great. So, this brand is all super fresh and so I know I don't want to be too early to say what's next, because you guys are still reveling in the creation of this, but when you're looking out from both what you want to have emerge from yourself and what you're feeling is the next need just intuitively for the world from a musical standpoint, like, what do you guys both see from the projects that are going to come out of you year forward?

EAST: Jon?

JON: Well, I've got a feeling that this one is kind of turning me very radically down a different route. I've also returned to DJing a bit recently, which has not really been possible for the last year and a half. And so I've felt the urge to start making some rhythmic music again, but overall, I think my general direction feels very different now. And I guess, it a little bit depends on how this goes down and what it brings in because I think putting out something with such a clear intention, it will bring in certain things and I need to see how I feel about what comes from it and whether I can handle it and whether it's nourishing for me as well. And ultimately, I start to understand how to answer that question by sitting in the studio and making something. Because definitely the highest intelligence I have is of that sort. It's definitely not in thinking ahead. Because in my mind, when I'm not making music, it's a little skittish and jumps over subjects all the time. So I just think it will come through, sounds kind of cheesy, but it will come through the music. It will come through when I sit down and start playing something again, like I was saying last night, like how playing the piano centers me and puts me in that zone. But that has become increasingly clear to me that that's my purpose here and that I shouldn't, because I went through phases of like, I need time off music and then just to focus on health and I went to put myself through a sort of boot camp of like doing insane amounts of Wim Hof breast work every morning and doing no music and just trying very hard to relax. It didn't work. 

EAST: Wasn’t that the one we’ve met, though? You said you were taking a sabbatical from music and then I presented potentially this idea of doing this track. And that was, I think, it was your first thing you kind of started on? 

JON: First thing was the Tayos Caves piece. 

EAST: True, that existed. 

JON: June of last year, that existed. My time off was, I can't remember if it was before or after that, but it was happening around that period. And it just felt like, well, I've been hammering at this for like 22 years. And I've done all these albums and so much stuff. And I've physically compromised myself through doing that. And I really need to recover. And I'd be just touring itself, it's very hard to do in a healthy way because, if you've just got off a plane and it's like, your levels of willpower and resistance to things that are going to help you feel better immediately are just lower than ever. It would already be low for me after a hard day of work, but if you had a flight to that and airport transfers, all the shit that comes with touring, that drink is calling loudly. So I just needed a break from everything and I just thought about music. I just kind of threw music out for a bit, not very long, and then yeah, this was the thing that something in my head just kind of said, remember those recordings from Ecuador? Remember, you're supposed to write that piece. And then the album began actually from that kind of void of feeling like shit. I mean, a lot of musicians I know had a very similar experience of just stopping for a while and some of them felt better. I definitely did not. And one of the intentions, just my own wellbeing is to learn how to just try and do it for pleasure a bit. Cause this album, I thought maybe was going to be just a thing I did for pleasure, perhaps, but 

EAST: That's why it's so good. 

JON: In fact, it was incredibly pleasurable, but pleasure is not really the word, but nourishing, maybe.

AUBREY: Yeah, I think that's probably a trap that a lot of artists get and they know that their art comes from a deep place of suffering. I never write more poetry than when I'm completely heartbroken or like something intense is going on. Sometimes there's a beautiful inspiration that comes from an experience and things like that. But I think a lot of artists have that where they're that well of energy then is able to be transmuted into art. And this is the process of alchemy, but you're starting with this pool of just fuel, of energy resources that if you channel it into whatever way that your mouth is formed to make that scream that allows it to release, whether it's words or music or art or painting or anything like that, that it's beautiful. And I think for an artist, it could be an easy trap to say like, well, I could really get myself into a really peaceful, equanimous place. But what happens to my art? What happens to the art at that point?

JON: Yeah. It's tricky because I haven't found a way to balance looking after myself physically. Like I do a lot of healthy stuff. I do a lot of breath work and training and saunas. But I also do a lot of stuff that I need to do to calm myself down after working. The amount of energy that pours into that music, particularly the upbeat stuff, but it actually turns out it was just the same with this album. It's just, I'm wired like I've got a fucking electric cord right up there. And it's like, yeah it's amazing, but what happens when it's 10pm and what am I supposed to do now? Well, even with all these techniques, yeah, I mean, I've been doing TM for six years. I can make my mood great. I can breathe myself happy. But it isn't calming. The nervous system is so jacked up by music and also the world around my sensitivity to world around, I haven't learned that balance. So I guess what I was trying to do in that month was learn that balance, but I'm still, yeah, that seems to be the challenge that still faces me.

AUBREY: You and most of us. You’re not alone.

JON: Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is just the world, right? The way there's this, the level of stimulation and that's out there. Fasting, all forms of fasting has proven to help me, but yeah

AUBREY: How about you East?

EAST: Honestly, this collaboration has been extremely nourishing for me. I've done different collaborations over the years, but I'm looking forward to more of that because I learned so much. I mean just, seeing a different perspective. I learned so much and it challenges ideas I have musically and actually on all levels, to how to be an artist and I want to do more of that. I'd be honored to do anything more with Jon forever and it really has inspired me to think bigger about what happens when what I do and what I bring to the table meets and is challenged by other ideas. And I want more of that because I think I can see now how it will better my offering. I think it's needed at this point in time for me. And I'm looking forward to those opportunities. So, that's what excites me is like, what sort of just occurred and how we both kind of got out of the way so much and just sort of just all happened. It's like, that's so awesome. And then on top of that, it's like I got to see so many things I never would have seen before, and realized about my own work. I mean, I can't tell you what a dream it is. Like I've been a fan of Jon for a long time and to call him a friend is ecstatic about it. But when Jon said, “hey, let's do this. Ram Dass track.” And he says, “why don't you start something and send it my way and I'll take over.” I'm like, “no problem.” I hung up the phone. I'm like, holy shit, I have to make a song. And I thought to myself, the way I have to do this is like every song it's like, don't think about it. Just make noise and recognize whatever you're going to send them is not going to be some perfect amazing piece. It needs to just be step one and I knew he knew that. It was like getting out of the way of things like that. And then you take those things I had made and watch you do your thing you get to see a different perspective on your own ideas and like I never thought of that. Why haven't I ever thought of it? That's such a great new idea musically and now that's just a new color in your palette of inspiration. So that's really, really exciting to me. The other thing I'm excited about is, in the psychedelic therapy space with music is this idea of access. I'm really interested in how we can bring these tools and experiences to people who maybe wouldn't normally be able to do this, whether it's for economic reasons, social justice reasons. Or a variety of reasons. And so we have a little project we're working on called Journey Space. That's about online facilitated journeys with music. And you do them in groups online, the cost can go way down. And we're working through sort of the spear tip of the legality of it. But I think there's a way to do it. And so we're launching this platform. And cultivating musicians to say, hey, you could guide a journey from start to finish. And so we're also building more musicians to kind of create in that space and sort of cultivate that style of music. And then hopefully also give access for people to come on a platform like Journey Space and maybe have an experience that's safer that they're probably going to do anyway, but it's probably better if there's someone there to help.

JON: That's a good kind of general point, I think. Yeah. They're going to do it anyway, but it's better to have some help. 

EAST: Yeah. And these music tools are, I think, awesome helps. And a lot of people don't even know that will help them until they get into this space. 

JON: In all the science reporting, which is obviously wonderful and positive that you look for the word music, you will not find it. And it's like–

EAST: Mendel Kaelin is one of the only people he's been doing research. And 

JON: Our friend Mendel Kaelin, he's a neuroscientist that actually came with me on the Tayos expedition to Exdor. And he was studying the effects of music on the brain in psychedelics and he started a company called Wave Paths, which I couldn't recommend strongly enough. He's gathered, have you? We both have contributed to this. And what it is is sort of, it's driven by AI, but it's actually music pulled from a wide range of artists in the psychedelic and sort of healing music genre.  And basically the therapist can guide where the mood goes in the music, so you can go, okay, we need to deepen or we need to intensify or we need to go, calmer or whatever. And he has really good taste in music, so you listen to it. And you can have it in its most minimal mode in the background, just like ambient music in your house, and it's so good. And it's never the same, because it's just expanding the pool of musicians in it, but also you can get super intense with it, and I believe that some ketamine clinics are already using it so they can sit there and they can go, right, this person needs to dial up the grueling factor.

EAST: More pain. Turn that up to nine. 

JON: But that's, yeah, I recommend everyone checking that out. That’s amazing

AUBREY: ‘In’ is going to be released at the time of this album. So check it out, all places where music is found, I suppose. And music for psychedelic therapy, also incredible. I can't recommend these more, as I said, some of the most profound musicals. And just experience this period of my life has come from you two gentlemen. So I'm forever grateful and on behalf of the world forever grateful for all of the work that you guys are doing. It's been incredible. Also for if you guys are interested in that bed that I was talking about the website is Feel Opus. Or go to feelopus.com, you can check it out. And maybe these guys, if they're inspired, you'll hear them drop some of their tracks through this, through this fucking portal at some point down the line. We'll see how it goes. We will see how it goes. Thank you so much, y'all. 

EAST: And thank you for the support. That was a great event and just over the years, man. Thanks for supporting all this work. 

AUBREY: Of course. 

JON: Yeah, I echo that. 

AUBREY: It's what we're here for. And it comes from just really, like, I love life, and people, and the world. At the bottom, at the very core of everything, this is the place of transcendence, it's just, fuck, it's amazing. Like this world is amazing. Let's keep it going. Let's play the infinite game. Let's love each other. I want my kids to be able to jump off waterfalls and go fishing in the ocean and live the life that we know is possible. And so we got some work to do to make sure that happens 

EAST: Dreaming it up together.

AUBREY: And sitting around the fire. Thanks so much, y'all. And thanks everybody for tuning in.