My God & My All - Saley Daley (1990)

 

CW: Religious Trauma (mentioned)

I've been getting into ambient? New Age? (don't understand the difference but willing to learn), this year and its an interesting experience. I feel like one of my main foibles is that I am a very anxious chonical insane person and the pressures of capitilism are not my friend. We live in a world that demands progress, results, metrics, and in stride I interalize a part of myself while I do not fear my own mortality I am quite aware that life is limited. I'm also an athiest so y'know probably doesn't help.

I have a bad habit of treating consumption as a stopgap for emotional wellness when I feel empty I cram whatever I can into me until I feel full and theres this very real part of my life where I can go days or weeks at a time despressingly watching all of the ... idk silent night deadly night sequels. My favorite is either 3 of 4 there insane not the point. THe point is that I have for most of my life had a very hard time allowing the waves of the lakes lap softly on my ears.

Brian Eno when we wrote music for airports talked about how this genre he was playing with had two modes that the music should be able to be listened to both 'passively' and 'activiely' that ambient music should reward the listener regardless. In that sense Ambient is kinda the evil doppleganger of jazz. because jazz demands rigid active attention to understand. I believe it was Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson who said that Jazz 'is like a puzzle you have to solve'.

So I begin with music for airports. and through that youtube begins to recommend me a lot of just obscure vintage ambient cassuettes ripped to the internet. The artist the title the track listing a lot of ascii and monotype art and a vibe.

And its interesting to me. around the 2020s some musical artists began posting there works online with untitled videos so you would see a thumbnail and no text. and a lot of these are just mysterious chill ambient videos like this. The netizens of the world have began to use the term 'internet checkpoint' modeled after similar cozy posts in the past. The idea is that in all of our empty souls with the doomscrolling here is a place to rest.

The interenet age is always one of overstimulation. Of us blasting our minds with bright lights. and the checkpoint is how as the teenyboppers are saying are place to rawdog life IRL.

So I start with My God and My All by Sally Daley. At time of writing my main knowledge of her stems from a youtube video posted by one UltravillageYT, a new age/ambient casseute cateloger who also runs an accompining website database on the topic. Through as you may have noticed. RYM User lefelz has kindly added additional information to this page. Thank you for that. According to UltraVillage Daley was a church organists and synthesist who made a variety of new age cassete tapes during the 80s and 90s. Very underground very american regional and I do love hte aestetic of the concept. A middleaged woman making cool funky music. in her churchs basement and just the people that need to know they already know. There over there.

The album is split into two parts. I have helpfully remember in my youth and vigor that this probably correlates to the 'A' and 'B' Sides of the Cassete. This also explains the 10 or 15 seconds of strict silence in between the track about half way through the rip which is an interesting artistic interpretation that I don't hate.

Side A is dominated by an 18 minutes track titled My God and My All which has this interesting combination of like catherdral reverbrance vibes and ocean. which makes sense as the subtitle is (A Seaside Meditation).

Side B carries this sort of soft whispery tone into a more immediate texture 'My God has this wave crashing sounds slowed down and a almost woodwind like synth playing around in the higher treble. If MYGAMYA were sitting on the beach in the day MYG is sitting at the beach at night. Its not fear but theres thrill and anticipation.

Rounding out the album is 'lament' a sweet orchestral number with numerious instrument like synths. Flutes and Bassoons dominatedly put then into the mix comes these more explicetly computery? synths. It has this almost celtic folk sound to it. Very zelda. Its beautiful and yet Lament speaks to some emotional core that I'm missing. The vibe reminds me a bit of Eliza Rickman but y'know if she was like a computer making 8-bit music for the SNES.

the finisher is a 6 minute song called 'Vi's Song' and part of what makes these videos so fascinating to me is the mystery. It the enviromental storytelling. There are no words to these songs no ephemera or artist interviews and so whoever 'Vi' is I think its beautiful that they were so loved and remembered.

Its also fascinating that the end of this album is much more accesible in terms of sound. You have once again the flute synth but this time a piano and what is very clearly a drum set comes together to play this wistful almost jazzy pop song. like you can see the singer double exposed as she talks about how her man left her. Its wistful and has a really lovely pulse do to the drum rhtym which I like. It allows the listener to get a pulse back in there veins as the album ends.

Often times I will say that the best movies are 'liminal' and what I mean by that is that they create a kind of 'space' you disappear into the film. Your already looked past the substance of the work the plot the character and all that and are now enjoying the film on a more base aesteic and emotional level. Your vibing with it. and so these films create this liminality. You watch them because you like how you feel when your 'in' them. and when the movie ends you feel like you had to step outside of a warm and loving house one you can always visit but can never stay in.

Vi's Song is a warm hug before you step through that door.

Before I finish this review I guess I should mention the elephant in the room that this is intended as a religious album. as I said earlier I am not a christian. I grew up in the church. Left it in my 20s and must now bear the cross of born again christians assumingly that I have never read the bible and assume that issue I have with the Religious Right in this country is not that its a
political movement who misuses religion to justify its bigotry, but that i think that they are immoral for going to church on easter. Janet I don't care if you have a personal relationship with god but when you tell me that my dreamcatcher is going to give me a demon. You are being racist and i will die on this hill.

To be extra woke about it I grew up in a church that preached a very limited view of what a person should be. That a man should be straight, marry a women, repeatedly put a baby in her for the glory of the lord and also make a 6 figure salary. Its important that the deacons of the church are middle class ryen. Just like jesus.

In that measure what it meant to be christian for the people in my church was very limited, very arbitrary, and very much in line with other hegemonic forces. To them being a christian aligned itself with being white, being wealthy, and not being homeless. All things that jesus definelty was. Anything outside of there narrow sect of religion was dogmaticly. Evil heathens who were going to hell and were also too stupid to realize that lighting a candle for the virgin mary was actually lighting the votive for old mr. splitfoot himself.

I grew up in a church that didn't believe women could be pastors, that TVs were demonic, that crosses were idolity, and that anyone who didn't believe exactly like them were in a cult. That catholics and jehover witness were not religious brethen but pagan blasphermers and at this point you can probably tell why I don't take communion anymore.

The whole point of this screed is that I grew up in a religion that would never have allowed this. That would never have been excepted this kind of music from this kind of person. And that is deeply sad. This was very explicetly a deep part of my life for a very formative amount of time. IT was painful and harmful to me in certain ways and in those moments of pain I turned torwards religion. It was an abusive relationship where christians were my abusers and god was my comforter.

I can not longer fill my soul with the easy answers that religion provides but what I take as cold confort is that there is a world outside of the people that called themselves christians and the community that called itself my church and so as one final act of christianly love I try to appreciate the types of joy people find in religion outside of that. I allow myself to appreciate the good from a distance to appreciate that for someone like Sally Daley this was a beautiful and fulfilling part of herself. That it gave her strength and unity and that it brought people joy and for that Ms. Daley I thank you for letting us listen.