Over the last few years, we’ve written a lot about the reemergence and critical reappraisal of New Age and ambient music from the 1970s and 80s. Maligned and overlooked for decades, with the luxury of distance, a great many of the movement’s artists now appear for what they were - some of the most interesting inheritors of the territories first plumbed by minimalism and the avant-garde, striving for the deeper consciousness through sound proposed by artists like Terry Riley and La Monte Young, while foreshadowing new movements of ambient music which would emerge across the 1990s and 2000s. Central to this conversation is the work of Don Slepian, whose stunning 1980s cassette only release, New Dawn, stands before us now, issued on vinyl for the very first time by Morning Trip, the wonderful Canadian imprint which blew minds with their reissue of Brent Snyder’s overlooked masterstroke, Cumulus, earlier this year.

Like so much New Age and ambient music from the 1970s and 80s, the work of Don Slepian extends far beyond what initially greets the ear. A fascinating figure, Slepian began his sonic explorations during the late 1960s, programming computers, building his own electronic circuits, and developing his own tape techniques. Across the 1970s, while living in Hawaii, his vastly ranging practice, in addition to recording his own work, included being a synthesiser soloist with the Honolulu Symphony, and a tester on the early internet as a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

As an artist, Slepian’s legacy rests in a series of beautiful and singular releases which began to emerge during the late 70s, and extend across the 1980s, one of which, Sea Of Bliss, received a vinyl reissue via Numero earlier this year, while many will remember the archival release, Recordings 1971-83, which brought Vinyl On Demand great praise back in 2015. Morning Trip’s much needed reissue of New Dawn takes the broader consciousness of Slepian’s remarkable, pioneering contribution to the history of electronic music one step further. Comprised of two, stunning side long works, droning long synthesizer tones (Korg PS3100) rise and fall against rippling harmonics and ambience of a Mellotron and analog tape echo, sculpting a singular and immersive space which washes over the ear - the sound of bliss which carried a misunderstood form of radical hope into the darkening days of the Reagan and Thatcher years.

Wondering, engaging, and more creatively challenging than it first appears, the reemergence of Slepian’s New Dawn is a welcome addition to Morning Trip’s important and growing body of work. A brilliant sonic balm returning when we could use a bit of bliss. An absolutely essential alternate vision to the standard narrative of experimental music.