If nothing else, listening to music is a journey. The type of trip that’s undertaken and the experiences gained is a two-way street between the artist and the audience. Spiritual, emotional, or even physical, the best music opens pathways for us to travel. New directions to take, new thoughts to contemplate, or ideas to celebrate. Tim Ferson, folk wizard of OM Collective, knows a thing or two about journeys, finally releasing the first taste of his upcoming debut album A Collection of Mr. Kite’s Open Mind after 7 years of creation. The song, Psilies Kite, is a supremely joyful central proponent to this theme of voyaging towards open-mindedness.
Forget about life for a moment and focus your entire attention on Psilies Kite from OM Collective for a purely transcendental experience.
Having already wowed us in 2015 with I Didn’t Know I Was Trouble, a spectacularly beautiful folk interpretation of Taylor Swift’s track I Knew You Were Trouble, this original material comes with bulk anticipation and wholesale expectations.
Psilies Kite has been in the making since 2011, although Ferson admits the origins of the song have become mythic due to a technological error. “In 2012, the garageband project crashed and corrupted, and at the same time my backup hard-drive clunked out. About 50% of Psilies Kite was recovered. The earliest recoverable recordings from the project date March 20, 2012, but tracking began in mid-2011.”
With countless instruments murmuring throughout and vocals provided by James Blackwood, Holly Martin and Ferson himself, the song is a smiling celebration of life, as it appears when one allows their mind to open to all the possibilities of happiness. The track is informed by “the root word for the “divine” as it appears around the world” to eventually coin the pertinent lyrics “You’ll see everything shines with the light of the sun.”
Ferson wants to be the vessel that carries us to this enlightenment, asking: “Do you see the light in happiness? In travelling? In a meaningful goodbye? In a good ol’ fashioned trip? Suddenly, special moments in everyday life are shiny. Who sprinkled fairy dust all over this shit?”
It’s one thing to have intentions about your music, but to actually achieve your goal is quite another. OM Collective set a high score here. You can’t help but feel good listening to this. The burbling opening sounds simultaneously sound like a farewell and the first steps of an adventure under Blackwood’s gentle introduction. Building gorgeously in tempo while still seemingly sticking to designated pathways the song ultimately throws you out into the world, unleashing your soul into infinitely open air with a positively sweet wall of sound. The opportunities now seem endless. That’s when you can’t stop yourself smiling, like when you close your eyes and raise your face to the sun in the springtime. The song continues on this uplifting and evocative wave for its entirety, concluding with some chanting that may as well be a dose of pure serotonin with every sound Ferson has produced working together seamlessly.
As for what he wants his music to convey, OM Collective has many ambitious thoughts and intentions which can be boiled down to concepts of healing and wholeness. “Music can be a vehicle for intuitively transporting ideas and feelings that would otherwise be caught by the strict filters of the analytical mind, with all its preconceptions,” Ferson says. “At this point, I’d ease into the dialogue by presenting “receptive listeners” with a finger, rather than a fist. That finger is simply raising the question, ‘Are you caught up in your beliefs and your knowledge, or are you really interested in moving mankind in a positive direction?’ Anyone who answers yes to the latter, is in a state to receive what I really want to be telling them.”
While I’ve never heard anything quite like Psilies Kite, it’s a case of everything good always feels familiar. There’s a sense of warm friendship and benevolent guidance to this music and if you want to see the world in the most positive light you can, chuck this on repeat. For Ferson, being able to finally release his music to world can only be compared to the greatest gift life has to offer.“I feel like I’ve been pregnant for 7 years. This is way out of my league to say, but I feel the way a new mother probably feels: I really, really hope this kid is going to go out into the world and become something wonderful.”
The story doesn’t end here people. Psilies Kite is being released along with a trippy hologram video clip which can only be viewed authentically when you buy the single and receive the necessary lens. Ferson says the video is very much in line with what he hopes to achieve with his album.
“I wanted to feel like I’m/Mr. Kite is personally inviting people, via this star-wars-eque hologram into another world, the world of A Collection of Mr. Kite’s Open Mind. We’re in the habit of consuming music like it’s burnt coffee or something… Find a track on Soundcloud; listen to 4 seconds; skip to 30 seconds; judge; close tab; back to Facebook. I want to lure people away from that scenario and into a space entirely governed by low-budget magic and psychedelic sounds.”
If all this isn’t enough to convince you to keep a very close eye on OM Collective, simply listen to the song again and “you’ll see everything shines with the light of the sun.” With A Collection of Mr. Kite’s Open Mind to be released in due time, stay tuned to find out what propelled Ferson to embark on this massive journey and how the music can change not only you, but the world.
