By: Kyle Rutherford

If you’re looking for the soundtrack for your next trip or astral journey, look no further than Transcendent Tunes’ newest compilation, Redemptio(N). This 12-track release is a vast mixture of glitchy danceable tunes and psychedelic, downtempo pieces from some of the most forward thinking electronic producers scattered across the country.

The journey begins with PropLydZ’s upbeat glitch-hop track, “Spacekat,” which fuses light guitar twangs with extremely heavy, guttural synth stabs. The mixture of light melodic elements with strong sounds keeps the tune intricate and ever changing throughout its entirety. HEISS’s “Pleroma” begins as if it will turn into the release’s second glitch-hop song in a row, but the whole tune is a progressive journey in itself. The Boston-based producer continuously adds new sounds to your ears with each passing minute, including beautiful celestial soundscapes, heavy arpeggiated synths and wonderful gliding tubular sounds.

NYC favorite Skytree lends a track to the release, and the result is very strange and psychedelic. While “Octahedrite” isn’t exactly something you would dance to, it definitely would be a great addition to any psychedelic journey. The sounds are strange and the vocals are contorted and confusing, but together they create something beautiful, even though that isn’t the first word one would think to describe it as.

Wattsun’s “Totemic Pulse,” is an eerie downtempo piece that sounds like something that would be played at an ayahuasca ceremony. The vocals are heavily contorted, yet the percussion is light and simple. This is definitely the kind of track that’ll take you to a different plane, even without the assistant of outside substances. Icaro’s “Groove Resistance” brings the tempo back up to the near glitch-hop realms, creating something fairly reminiscent of some of Shpongle’s sounds.

Zonra then brings the tempo back down a bit on “Garden Variety Wraith.” While the droplets and other percussion sounds are fairly simple and fairly drowned out, the rising soundscapes and string sounds are wonderful and the snyth sounds are intricate constantly morphing into something new. Oomah’s “Looner” is fairly similar to Wattsun’s track in that it sounds like it would be played at some sort of Native American ceremony (possibly more influenced by peyote.) It’s quite minimally produced and not exactly the most exciting tune on the release, but many of the more organic sounding sound effects give the track a nice touch.

SpaceshipEarth gives us probably the most strongly produced song on the whole release with “Synchronicity.” Sonic vocals, beautiful reverb, powerful guitar riffing and extremely heavy bass performers. It’s exactly the kind of music you would want to be listening to while traveling through space. MorePreciousDust brings some heavy dubstep sounds to our ears that take us back to another epic ritualistic experience with “Sloth.”

DixonStovall’s “Cubic Contact” is a strong mash-up of a wide array of sounds. Combining glitchy synths, excellent guitar work, gliding bass sounds and simple chords, it basically has everything that you would want in a groovy release.

Have you ever used one of those keyboards that teaches you how to play popular songs with the lit up keys? VII’s “SubstanceD” kind of has that kind of whimsical sound about it that you typically hear from those, with simple percussion and amusing synth melodies. Even with how elementary it seems, it still is a super happy and bubbly tune.

Closing out the release is Ohio’s visionary bass shaman Tangled Branches. His tune “Hello Dimension” was inspired by his first astral journey with DMT and samples his own breathing, audio from an interview with a 1950's housewife on LSD, and some wonderful organic guitar pedal sounds. He really does a great job at creating that transcendent feeling from your first time blasting off, and it’s the perfect tune to listen to for any journey you’re taking in life, even if it is something as simple as driving down the road to get some gas.

So if you’re feeling like turning on, tuning in and dropping out, turn up the Redemptio(N) compilation and let your mind ease into a otherworldly state of consciousness.

Key Tracks: Skytree’s “Octahedrite,” SpaceshipEarth’s “Synchronicity,” Tangled Branches’ “Hello Dimensions”