PAUL BEAUDOIN – ICOSA / MOON WOKE ME NINE TIMES
Until recently I had not heard of Paul Beaudoin before. This felt weird when I checked out his Bandcamp page: no less than 30 releases since 2020. And that is only his musical output: as an ‘interdisciplinary artist’, he also works with paint, video, and text.
But it was even more remarkable when I found out Beaudoin is an academically trained composer (with a Ph.D. in music theory and composition) who published on John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, and the history of American music. In the past, he worked with renowned artists like John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Milton Babbitt (among others).
After a scholarship in Estonia in 2015, Paul ‘experienced a radical shift in his creative work […] his music moved away from the dissonant, angular music he felt was expected of an academic composer in New England. Paul’s music softened, expanding into long, slowly evolving soundscapes living somewhere between ambient music and the long drone music of composers such as La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Eliane Radigue’.
From the may releases that appeared in 2024 (and in the beginning of 2025), I picked only two to mention here as an example of his work. This was a fairly random choice, to be honest – I could have easily picked more from the wealth of music he released.
Icosa (released in May 2024), is a 60-minute continuous piece. It is named after the art gallery in Austin, Texas, where this music was played continuously from 5:00pm until 7:00am for one month. And indeed: this is perfect music to accompany a night’s sleep or a sleepless night.
Moon Woke Me Nine Times also presents subtle ambient, but now as nine relatively shorter tracks, each with its own atmosphere. Beaudoin obviously prefers to leave interpretations to the listener, since there is no introduction to the music on this album.
You’ll have to do with the track titles, like Ancestral Shadows, The Stone Grinder, Restless Thoughts, Dream State, and Shishi-Odoshi.
As I said, these are only two albums (almost randomly chosen) from his digital catalog. They’re only meant as a starting point for you to learn more about this fascinating (and prolific) ambient music artist.
PAUL BEAUDOIN – ALCHEMIES
In addition to his own series of self-released albums, Beaudoin has also released a new album on the Ambientcat label, a sublabel of Chitra Records. Chitra Records is a label dedicated to ‘surreal music for a deep listening experience’. For their Ambientcat sublabel, ‘the only requirement is that the sound is pleasant. Music should be relaxing or even healing’.
Alchemies shows a different perspective of Beaudoin‘s music. Here, he blends orchestra textures with glitch and noise elements. ‘These contrasting sound worlds – organic and synthetic, refined and raw – come together in a seamless dialogue’, related to the theme of this album: alchemy – ‘the quest to turn base materials into gold and seek the philosopher’s stone’.
Besides the more ‘orchestral’ ambient tracks there are also a few more rhythmic electronic tracks (Lunar Conjunction, Mercury’s Whisper), completing this album full of varied sonic perspectives.
As far as I’m aware no alchemist ever succeeded in the quest to ‘unlock the hidden potential of the universe’. , The journey is far more important than the destination. The same is true for music. But the interplay of the different elements is definitely an enjoyable ‘alchemical transformation of sound and silence into rich tapestries of experience’.