Aurinkopari plays with polarities as it seeks to find something celestial in the mundane. The brightest sound of the album is captured in the darkest night of the year. Sine waves, scaled according to old wartime engineers, are performing as a magic flute. A hydrophone detects other-worldly sounds of a drowning compost and a ceremonial Javanese gendèr is recorded in a bunker… While the processes of recording the album were often playfully esoteric, I think the music itself is warmly heartfelt.

Good Morning Tapes open 2023 with a vinyl edition of Shakali’s deep meditation on celestial themes revolving around ceremonial Javanese metallophone, scaled Sinewaves and beautiful hydrophone recordings taken on the darkest night of the year. One of the purest, most immersive Good Morning editions to date, highly recommended for lovers of anything from Alice Coltrane to Tomoko Sauvage.

This set of spiritual/innerzone healers from Finland’s Simo Hakalisto aka Shakali was previously found on a short-run tape issued last year and now makes its way to vinyl. His music is rich with swirling textures and Eastern mysticism, and a smart pre-midi bent. On ‘Aurinkopari’ Simo nimbly deploys a mix of massaged sine waves, hydroponic recordings, and a Javanese gendèr (a type of metallophone used in gamelan ceremonies) at the service of a mesmerising, naturally fractal-not-fractional conception of experimental ambient practice.

Heady and heartfelt, the set proceeds within a remarkably well realised and self-contained system of sound from the lush bloom of the title piece to the pastoral rumination of ‘Rural Aural’. Where the Alice Coltrane-esque opener is reverberantly plush with thrumming bass, cascading plucks and its brooding wind motifs, the following parts dematerialise into a subtler play of the senses, trickling from the iridescence of ‘Aja Udu’ to hypnagogic exotica in ‘Ad Astra’ and organic, airborne melody in ‘Aluilla’ with a marked care and empathy for your trip.