Bart Hawkins

Story

Bart Hawkins is an electronic music composer with an emphasis in modular synthesis. Modular synthesis is a unique musical art form, both from a creative process and a listening experience. The sounds that are created from a modular synth has a certain organic personality or unique sonic footprint. Building these sound personalities into a moving sonic journey is like sculpting something that is infinite. Once I became familiar with the modular system, the obsession really started. Bart Hawkins has 25+ years experience as a filmmaker with a concentration on cinematography, which has translated well into visionary music. I found my passion through music. It's a combination of my life’s work as a visual and creative cinematographer, film editor, metal sculptor and shamanic practitioner. Creating electronic music lets me combine these different experiences into one holistic creative passion. In my debut album, 21 Pulse Eclipse, I wanted to capture the powerful, raw, undulating currents that create the life and breath of electronic music. I wanted to learn from and know these currents as I would know a human being. To listen to each voice, to know their own unique life cycles as they come into being one moment and dissolve into the next. It is my passion to create musical journeys of the mind, even in ways that go beyond rational thought.

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What is music to you? What does it give you?

Sound is incredibly important to me. It is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. “In the beginning there was the word...” Sound can transform, not only mental states of being but can transform physical states as well. Sound can physically heal cells in the body and also destroy cells. Sound can levitate objects, create geometrical patterns (cymatics), travel between universes, can can be expressed in mathematical and astrological equations. Sound can be very personal and universal simultaneously. With the right combination of sounds, you can levitate the human experience to a very high level or down to its lowest depth in the unconscious mind. When I started meditation in 1984, I became very aware of sounds both inner and outer. Hearing became not only what I could hear with my ears, it became something entirely different. A big part of who I am is someone who studies shamanic principles. What is shamanic? Simply put, anyone or thing that acts as an intermediary between our "normal" world and the "unseen" world. Music can be used as an important vehicle between dimensions, a spiritual catalyst, and much more. 21 PULSE ECLIPSE is meant to be the electrical part of a multidimensional journey and is meant to be experienced with your eyes closed, sitting in the ‘sweet spot’ between your speakers or with your headphones on, with no distractions. Making music with a modular synth is super therapeutic, even spiritual/esoteric at times. It has deepened my ability to listen, to be unafraid to go down rabbit holes that sometimes takes hours with no results or go fearlessly into dark places, as well as the lighter places. This sonic journey, in a strange way, is like a practice ground for my personal life. There is no way to separate me from the music, from the awareness of a grand spiritual adventure in this life. It has also deepened my appreciation for the great composers like Bach, Beethoven. Mozart, Stravinsky, Reich and many many others. Music is a mystical and magical experience.