New Age Music: Now Playing in the Afterlife Lounge
New Age music, once the shimmering soundtrack of crystal shops and yoga VHS tapes everywhere, has entered its twilight years, if not its twilight dimension (the Afterlife Lounge).
Born in the late 1970s, New Age is close to eyeing a senior discount at Whole Foods while reminiscing about its glory days when pan flutes were considered edgy. The genre that promised transcendence through synthesizers and wind chimes is now inching into its fifth decade, like a hairline crack in a Tibetan bowl.
Michael Hedges, guitar sorcerer and tragic casualty of the genre’s more adventurous side, has long since ascended to the astral plane. He is not alone. Many of New Age’s founding figures have either passed on or become so ethereal they are indistinguishable from mist. Some may have perished from prolonged exposure to their own discographies.
What New Age Music in the Afterlife Lounge Sounds Like
It is the hush of George Winston’s piano, the acoustic purity of William Ackerman’s guitar and wind-swept strings. The shimmering synths of celestial dolphin diplomacy. New Age sprawls across branches–ambient, acoustic, electronic, and vaguely aquatic–each promising transcendence with the tonal urgency of a scented candle.
Today, the New Age genre is a sonic retirement home: ambient, unobtrusive, and vaguely medicinal. It is the music you hear while getting a colonoscopy or browsing the “healing crystals” section of a suburban metaphysical emporium. Even its album covers–once bold with dolphins and pyramids–now resemble the waiting room art of a dentist who believes in reincarnation.
New Age music may have become old age music; some wags say it retired to Boca Raton, where it plays itself to sleep; but it is still here, still soothing, still suspiciously void of rhythm. Now it plays not to awaken your chakras, but to gently remind you where you left your reading glasses. And maybe, just maybe, to usher you toward the light.
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