PLANETARY PEACE - Synthesis 2LP

Recorded in their living room on a Teac tape machine, Synthesis was entirely composed and performed on a mail order Serge synthesizer kit that Planetary Peace (the husband and wife duo of Will & Kalima Sawyer) had built themselves. Originally dubbed in a minuscule cassette edition that was mostly given away to friends and colleagues, this brilliant piece of work was almost entirely unknown until collector Brett Becker chanced upon one of the only known copies in existence at the yard sale of a former New Age disc jockey in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2014.

There’s a very palpable DIY-vibe that runs throughout the album, which gets filtered through a visionary lens where slightly off-kilter devotional folk songs expand into majestic synth excursions that reach for the outer edges of the cosmos. It's a strange, beguiling collection of songs where two kindred spirits are operating simultaneously on a higher plane, unlike many other ostensibly "new age" albums, especially in the way that it so embodies such a sense of wonder. Now living in Ha'iku, Hawaii on the island of Maui, the Sawyes operate an organic farm and have carried on their DIY roots by creating a solar powered studio they built themselves in which they continue to record to this day.