CD: Seven Cycles: Music for Quiet (CD/DVD)

Stellia is composers Gordon Harvey and Robin Gist, along with video developers Mark O'Brien and Mark Dickson and an array of contributing musicians.

The Seven Cycles project is unique in several ways. Wishing to explore the role of music as a vehicle for calm and emotional transcendence via meditation, Gordon Harvey and Robin Gist (Stellia) concluded that most music designed for meditation is bland and predictable so they chose to explore music that could be meditated to, but could also be emotionally engaging in its own right.
Robin was at the same time experimenting with adding sub-audio frequencies to ambient recordings, particularly exploring the 7Hz band. This led to the idea of an album woven around the number 7, applying the number in various ways in the process of composition and production as a 'compositional constraint' and guide to the direction of the pieces.

The addition of video was a natural outgrowth of the use of surround audio, with its association with film, but in this case deliberately using simple, minimalist, slow-moving visuals which serve to enhance the listening experience rather than dominate it.