The Dark Meditator Released February 21, 2025 Noah Lifschey is an award-winning composer, electro-acoustic multi-instrument explorer, and self-proclaimed modular synth mad scientist.
He sent me a pre-release link to his gorgeous record, and I descended into a relationship with this record that will last for many repeat listens. To put it plainly - it's fantastic. Please enjoy my review and conversation with Noah!
Noah Lifschey’s The Dark Meditator is an invitation to drift through shadowy depths where rhythm and texture intertwine like bioluminescent tendrils.
The stereo field throughout this release is alive and teeming with motion, from the opening ambience shimmers of "Demons Meditate Too" to the last reverberations of "They Crossed Under."
Across these five sprawling tracks, Lifschey crafts sonic landscapes where streams of syncopation and intricate polyrhythms ripple like unseen currents beneath the surface.
Each piece offers a tactile, almost physical listening experience—ear candy delivered with a hypnotic, otherworldly elegance.
"Demons Meditate Too," the album's 16-minute opener, sets the tone with a brooding, organic pulse that feels like an ancient machine awakening. Here, ASMR-like textures play a central role: microscopic creaks, human voice, drips, and crackles flit between channels, giving the sensation of an intimate ear-cleaning ritual.
By the time "The Mechanized Flow" emerges, the rhythm has evolved into a more angular form, as sonar-like tones bounce and reflect, suggesting a mysterious dialogue between submerged entities. These echoes continue through "Caravan," where a shimmering tide of polyrhythms evokes the image of scuttling underwater creatures, calling and chittering as they navigate an unseen world. Bad-ass-ness prevails here. Beware.
The second half of the album deepens the immersive experience. "Windthrown," at 18 minutes, stretches luxuriously, offering a vast sonic terrain where deep textures shift and swirl like oceanic sediments disturbed by distant tremors. Each sound is impeccably recorded and produced, with subharmonic pulses that feel like ancient forces stirring below. The closing track, "They Crossed Under," carries a sense of final passage—sonar pings echo and dissolve into an expansive void while the last hints of mechanical rhythm fade into stillness. With The Dark Meditator, Lifschey doesn’t merely present music; he conjures a universe where sound and silence are equally potent, inviting listeners to sit back, sink in, and explore the depths.
Tell us about your musical life and your inspirations to do what you do?
I've been a composer for years for a living, for TV and VR for a long time, which morphed into movies, episodic, animation, and trailers. I got turned onto modular a little over three years ago and went fully down the rabbit hole, led by a Moog Matriarch. My bank account didn't thank me, but it opened up a totally exciting new world. I got the freshest dose of inspiration that I can remember, and it's still there every time I turn it on. It's not for everyone because of the time and effort you need to create on it (and once it's gone, it's gone), but that's a part that's so damn refreshing to me, as well as the unpredictability of it. I almost immediately started to make videos of performances that move around between IDM, ambient, noise, electro, industrial, filmscore-style, and more, often within one performance, and always incorporating my very off-kilter musical brain which naturally gravitates towards surprise.
I released an album about a year and a half ago of some of my favorite jams from the first year and half or so getting to know modular (and a Moog Matriarch), then Jon Gee turned me down the road of ambient about a year ago, which was a groove I couldn't resist for a while. This is part one of two albums (two because they're sometimes verrrryyy long jams!) made over that time with those performances. They're done the way I do things, which is throwing down whatever I'm feeling and hearing without regard for genre. As much as I love the noise and weirdo parts of modular, my composer brain is always there and wants to tell musical stories.
I have to ask—what’s behind the name? The name "The Dark Meditator" came to mind because, while I meditate regularly, I don't vibe with most meditation music I've heard. I felt it was meditation music that I would want to meditate to in my own shadowed, flickering haven; something darker that peeks under the edges of the norm and is more experimental but still musical, and that wouldn't necessarily shock your brain stem if meditating to it. Or maybe it would!
Many (ok, most) of our readers are absolute gear heads. Can you tell us about some of the gear you used for this release?
I used various/all parts of my eurorack and external modular gear on this, including faves like my Moog Matriarch, Landscape Noon, Instruo Arbhar, Joranalogue Collide 4, Forge TME Vhikk X, Schlappi Angle Grinder and 100 Grit. I like doing polyphony, usually driven by Make Noise O-Ctrl (sometimes OXI One and/or 4ms Catalyst Sequencer) and often also using function generators for VCOs, especially those with variable slope shapes like Contour 1, Falistri, and Dual ShEV. Make Noise Strega is in there sometimes, either as a voice or an effect, and my beloved Pittsburgh Waveform always finds a way in, often for bass. I'm a fan of slowly moving randomness/chaos and use/combine modules like Orbit 3, Ultra Random Redux, Quadrax, and Triple Sloths for that. I would craft the general idea ahead of each jam, then go to town and let it evolve naturally...and learn to embrace the surprises that always happen. My DPW Switch is indispensable for most of the jams, to change up what's happening in different ways.
Thanks for your time, Noah. You made an excellent record. Thank you for sharing it with us.
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