Bleep

Ruth Mascelli has found a knack outside of their band Special Interest for creating magically arresting worlds through dewy synthscapes. Their second solo album Non-Stop Healing Frequency explored the often misguided salve of new age occultism, and with a followup release, we dive even deeper into the album’s extrasensory recesses. The Institute For Astral Health is a seamless DJ mix of esoteric energy and hermetic healing, a self help tape transmission from the inner sanctum with signals met by otherworldly interference.

As with A Slow Night At The Baths, the abstracted companion to Mascelli’s debut album, the sounds here are slowed down and scuzzed out. Described as “hauntological detours from the NSHF sessions”, they capture a misted over cutting room floor: grainy brass chords sift through sand, with the drone suddenly dropping into a well of throbbing harmonics, fusing together the eerie and the sublime. Melody is gradually lit on fire as the second track’s lungs expand. Funk bass creeps in with rhythmic slaps, while a silvery arpeggio watches the flames spread and distort. A grand organ plays a brazen dirge just in time for the lacerating noise to consume all.

The third track’s muted yet lustrous synths wade into a woozy chillout sequence, perhaps the most genuinely feelgood of Ruth Mascelli’s deceptive healing era. Dubwise synths, deep house-adjacent keys, and downtempo rhythms drive into late night vibes, yet all is whisked away into the ambience again. Voices from the outer edge gasp through track four, overtaken by sludgy industrial clatters and stomps, and ushered out by a glassy refrain tiptoeing to supernatural effect.