In the Liminal Circuit: Explorations in Sonic Metapsychosis
Ali Balighi
Electropoem No. 11
(2025)
The Electropoem Series is an exploration of the intersection between sound, space, and poetic expression. Each piece emphasizes the spatial placement and movement of sound, creating an auditory experience where the interplay between sound and silence fosters deep listener engagement.
These works aim to push the boundaries of auditory perception, offering listeners an immersive experience that blends precision with poetic depth.
The compositions in the Electropoem Series are based on the ED2-11 tuning system, which divides the harmonic interval (2:1) into eleven equal parts. The scale is structured as follows:
109.09091, 218.18182, 327.27273, 436.36364, 545.45455,654.54545, 763.63636, 872.72727, 981.81818, 1090.90909, 2/1
This tuning enriches the series by introducing harmonic variety and spatial depth, serving as a foundation for the exploration of unconventional soundscapes and enhancing the poetic essence of the works.
—Ali Balighi
This music slides. Like a viscous organic mass, shimmering and sparkling under the dual light source of the eschatological trumpets, this music is the change between states.
This music is the redesign in action. It moves from absorption and dissolution—a pause—into an embodiment of the essential, the original, the Pneumatic.
This music is the liminal zone the mystics whispered of—the interstice between the first trumpet blast, which fractures the earthly illusion of the self, and the second, which rebuilds it in the secret architecture of spirit.
This music is the work of metapsychosis: the movement of the soul through thresholds, the shedding of form, the reweaving of essence. A transference across ontological veils.
Reality is not a binary but a triad, and between body and spirit lies a horizon called the imaginal, where symbols move, and meanings take shape. In this middle kingdom, forms melt into archetypes, and barriers between realities grow thin.
This music is the flow state that is not one or the other but the slide from one… to the other. It is the in-between, fragile like a mirage, felt more than seen—a choreography of becoming.
The sage with the corkscrew hair was indeed on to something:
I could never understand the wind at all, was like a ball of love
And when I’m sad
I slideWatch now
I’m gonna slideMarc Bolan from “The Slider”
—Michael Eisenberg
Ali Balighi, a composer, sound designer, and sound engineer, was born in Tehran, Iran. He graduated from The University of Art in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in music performance. A passion for composition led him to pursue a master’s degree in composition at Texas Tech University, where he is currently a student for a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Composition.
Ali’s music can be streamed and purchased at his bandcamp page (including several more works in his Electropoem series).
He also maintains an extensive website that is well worth checking out and an Instagram page that is regularly updated with new music.
Unearth Noise
Terrestrial Mechanisms
(2024)
I refer to the music of Unearth Noise as ‘exploratory music’, in which I seek to reinvent “music” as a new sonic art form, free of the confines of traditional music theory. The goal is to construct abstract sonic structures which stimulate and challenge the psyche. Terrestrial Mechanisms is an abstract sound collage which in itself is a sentient being, the creation of which was a collaboration between myself and the will of the resulting piece
Roger Berkowitz
This six-minute offering is a proverbial polyrhythmic paradise. A closer listen reveals a microcosm of fractalized layers—one, yes… just one infinitesimal stratum reveals vast architectures that, when perceived through an unfathomably wide lens manifest as cities the size of stars. These are stacked worlds—skewed in architecture—collating, congealing, and cascading into multiverses beyond reckoning. One layer. One Planck-length stratum. The all in miniature.
Indeed, it all works. The wheels of time and the cogs of space lock into place and turn with a strange inevitability—animating the machine of being. But I must question the word “terrestrial.”
“Terrestrial” connotes Earth—this Earth. But to truly digest this particular lark’s tongue in aspic, one must recognize that the mechanisms turning here do not belong to the Earth we know, but to another Earth entirely—a visionary and eternal Earth. An Earth of imaginal geography, autonomous to the all we know yet composed of true images, real forms.
Here, guidance is internal. The mech’s running this show are not silicon-born but animated by the Xvarnahian light that greases the gears of the soul’s ascent. These terrestrial mechanisms turn silently, eloquently, and for a brief, dazzling moment, distinguish the image from the real.
—Michael Eisenberg
To purchase Terrestrial Mechanisms, please visit the dedicated bandcamp page.
Unearth Noise is Roger Berkowitz who also happens to have a healthy back catalog. If you enjoyed this piece, why not check his full bandcamp page out? Turn the wheels, that turn you!
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