This “Bell Study” by Dave Seidel, aka Mysterybear, uses light echoes of looped gamelan samples to create a quiet, peaceful sonic space that has a rhythmic component even as it suggests itself for reflection and contemplation. In theory, or at least based on the barest of descriptions, the combination of melodic percussive tones and a fairly rapid sequencing should gather the listener’s attention rather than what happens here, which is that it provides a kind of gentle lull. It’s music that you can focus on, but also music that encourages you to not focus. The result is hypnotic. The tones themselves have a similarly self-contradictory beauty, in part richly tonal and at the same time lightly sour, especially when the loops allow for beading and overlays that expose subtle harmonic dissonances.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/mysterybear. More from Seidel, who is based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, at mysterybear.net.