Esalen Lectures

Arriving three years after the underrated 2012 debut album by the Host, Barry Lynn returns to the alias with Esalen Lectures, the project's second full-length. Abandoning the frenetic footwork rhythms and sun-faded chillwave textures of its predecessor, Esalen Lectures is a busy, somewhat paranoid ambient collage, flitting through 16 brief tracks in twice as many minutes. While the Host's self-titled debut reflected nostalgia for '90s Internet culture, with track titles like "Neo-Geocities" and "Angel Fire," Esalen Lectures reaches back further, with selections like "DARPA Spectrum" and "Subproject 58" flashing back to the dawn of the psychedelic era. The album's spacy, rippling guitars recall space rock pioneers such as Steve Hillage, and effects-heavy synths point to the stranger side of new age; the warped tones and bird calls of "Minerva Dreamstate" are more unsettling than meditative. The album's immediacy carries it and really makes it stand out; it almost seems too hyperactive to really label it "ambient." Unpredictable and a little bit unsettling, Esalen Lectures is a bizarre, thrilling trip. ~ Paul Simpson