"[Celebrated Visitor] is like an audio sculpture that takes 11 minutes to walk by, and the two halves are a nice way of "existing" - or giving off the vibe that they are suspended in space-time - as opposed to a piece of music that thematically builds and expounds upon melodies and harmonies. Genre-wise, it's part ambient, found-sound/sample-focused, part Massive Attack, electric piano feature." - Noah Gilfillan, sound engineer @ Audio for the Arts (Madison, WI)

"Equal parts Thievery Corporation, Graham Marlowe and eastern Tibetan landscape. I feel like a celebrated visitor at the gates of Dharmshala getting ready to have a one-on-one with the Dalai Lama." - Scott Werley, graphic designer (Portland, OR)

As a solo artist (Lakewaves), I'd been looking for a way to create the musical equivalent of a short film, an EP with a "visual" bent. I'd recently seen a number of artists do an outright "visual album" - such as Toro Y Moi's Boo Boo and Washed Out's Mister Mellow - and had my interest piqued at recent concerts by Bonobo, M'n Jam, Madison's own And Illusions and Brian Bradley ("Skywaves") wherein the visual being broadcast behind the band was just as immersive as the music.

I've had a lifelong intrigue of using found sounds and rare footage to form the basis of a musical piece, and of composers that experimented with them in their work. Found sounds can be disorienting by themselves, as they alter your sense of space - and in the case of [the ones heard in this track], the audio stripped from that rare footage acts as a sort of sonic tour guide during the second half.

A NOTE ON THE HISTORY
Throughout the 1950s and beyond, Dr. Sidney Cohen - a physician who for many years researched the effects of drugs on the mind - was doing research on psychotomimetics (drugs or compounds that mimic psychosis), as the U.S. government was looking into whether or not these things had beneficial properties - or, more specifically, if they could act as a sort of truth serum. This is not unlike the research being done around this time by neuroscientist John C. Lilly, who had been studying the effects of sensory-deprivation (which proved to be overwhelmingly positive) on the brain. He later went on to invent the "float tank" for therapeutic use.

What you hear is bits of a conversation between the test subject [the housewife of a military veteran, who worked in the Los Angeles Veterans Administration Hospital in which this is conducted] and Dr. Cohen, as he checks in with periodically throughout her experience. Thus, the "found sound" element. The rest is history.

Article on history of found footage: abcnews.go.com/Health/1950s-hous…story?id=12640926