Ami Shavit - Alpha 1 by Finders Keepers Records

'The music of this record was stimulated by the theory and practice of biofeedback. It is aimed to create a calm, relaxed and meditative mood associated with alpha brain waves.’

Part outsider electronic album; part physiological experiment; part work of art; this is not your average new age record. You won’t find any cosmic or spiritual connotations between the unsupposing and briefly annotated gatefold covers. This is an accidental new age record. It wasn’t designed to invoke images of far away landscapes or induce meditative states; rather it is the end result of a personally developed meditative technique called Alpha Mood. The brainchild of a reclusive Israeli multimedia artist with a fascination in philosophy, technology and sound by the name of Ami Shavit, In Alpha Mood is the result of a personal and artistic exploration to both overcome a personal trauma and push the boundaries of a fledgling physiological understanding whilst utilising the burgeoning domestic synthesizer technology of the late 60s and early 70s.
With an enviable private collection of synthesisrs first started in 1972 during his travels to the US just as they first arrived in music stores and shipped home to Tel Aviv, the professor of both philosophy and art and established kinetic artist was fascinated with art that involved technology. In particular being able to give something mechanical an emotive angle. His early works primarily involved motorised mobiles (he actually installed one in Tel Aviv’s first discoteuque). Seeking to combine his love of electronic music acts like Tangerine Dream and Philip Glass and this new synthesiser technology with his fascination for the relatively new technique of biofeedback – a process in which technology is used to relay information about the body’s functions enabling a change in physiological activity in order to manipulate them. Combined with his understanding of alpha brainwaves (primarily attributed to a function of the brain that deals with relaxation), Ami embarked on an experiment with what he coined Alpha Mood – a state in which the brain is working in relaxation and in which he used music as a means of helping induce his own meditative state. With practically no formal musical training and working in complete isolation of the Tel Aviv music scene – with the exception of allowing cult prog nearly men Zingale and a handful of close friends to use his private studio – over the next two years he recorded hours and hours of experimental improvised music, or “sounds” as he prefers to call it.