Every music release put out into the world has a story behind it. Maybe it’s as simple as “person noodles in bedroom to make songs.” Maybe it’s as elaborate as hiring a PR firm to help craft a narrative about a genre bending new fifth album and the heartache that inspired it. Sometimes these stories help contextualize what you’re hearing. Maybe they increase enticement. In the case of this Crystalline Encounters release, the story presented does both.. as well as brings up a lot of questions on the legitimacy of its creation!
Here’s the first paragraph of the release notes:
The music on this tape was purportedly created by Stephen Messler in the years following his claims of having been abducted by extraterrestrials multiple times throughout the late 1980s. Messler disappeared without a trace in 1996 leaving behind a disorganized pile of scattered notes and around a dozen audio tapes on which he had attempted to recreate the sounds he heard while aboard alien vessels. The tapes were eventually discovered by Messler’s nephew who restored and digitized them. This is the fifth cassette in the series, but the first to have a real release as the previous ones were so limited as to barely exist.
Right off the bat, you’re gonna hit play to find out exactly what sounds were attempted to be recreated from the alien vessel. What you hear is other worldly, as well as chaotic and sometimes numbing. It’s not outlandish to think if you were brought aboard an unidentified flying object, this might actually be what it feels like in that environment.
Of course, you may not believe the tale at all. It may be a pure fiction intended to give a quaint story to some ambient noisemaker’s latest efforts. And, yes, that is a valid skeptical view to take. However, looking around the Internet for anything about Crystalline Encounters or Stephen Messler turns up next to nothing related to this effort. If this were just a marketing scheme, wouldn’t there be an Instagram account to follow? Or a YouTube channel to like and subscribe? There’s none of that.
Even if it is just a fanciful story to frame two fifteen minute pieces, it’s an effective one. It gives you context, it creates intrigue and it asks you to enter into a world where a UFO abduction drove someone mad trying to recreate their experience. Try playing the music extremely loud in a room with no visible light, you may just find yourself a believer after all.