Astral Travel

Astral Travel is an American experimental band from Santa Cruz, California. Their music contains elements of psychedelia, shoegaze, ambient, and pop. Their distinctive sound is characterized by multiple layers of clean, reverbed and delayed guitars over ethereal vocal loops]].
A Light Wave Radio insert included inside the album Arkangelis describes them as such: "Swirling post-rock, shoe-gaze, ambient and IDM influences, Astral Travel entrances the listener into whirlpools of colorsound, sparkling with ineffable beauty, and exploding with heavenly prismatic rainbows of dreamgazing, eargasmic bliss. Layers of crystalline guitars, pulsing, hypnotic basslines, cathedral organs, space echoes and futureverbs make love to waves of angelic vocals and ethereal, ambient washes of lushly treated, freshly picked notes from our soundgarden, birthing the instantly recognizable Astral Travel wall of sound..."
History
Astral Travel was formed under the guidance of self-taught multi-instrumentalist Andrew Webb Bauer in 2005 in Pacific Grove, California, before moving the project to Santa Cruz, CA where he met vocalists Danielle Hiscock and Zach Kirshner. Percussionist and engineer Ryan Lotz joined the group in the summer of 2007. The group signed on to local indie label Light Wave Radio Records in 2008 to release "The Sound of Light", their official full-length studio album and headlined the Capitola Peace festival that summer.
The band continues to tour in support of their new record, "Arkangelis" along both coasts.
In an interview with Sound on Sound, Bauer described "teaching himself guitar, bass, drums, organ, piano, synthesizer, sitar, glockenspiel, violin, cello, trumpet, flute and pan pipes in a period of just 4 years, with no musical training at all". He performs "all guitars, bass, sitar, string and keyboard arrangements" as well as writing "all the lyrics to the songs".
The group frequently references the teachings of Advaita Vedanta in their music, as well as drawing on Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism, Christian Mysticism, Astrology, Numerology and Sufism.
In Spring 2009, Bauer founded Mount Madonna Studios, a recording studio at the Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville, California. While finishing Arkangelis there, he produced and engineered records for New Zealand folk artist Neal Ghoshal, Native-American flute player Tatiana "Tais" Chaika, Portland-based folk singer Laura Scher, rapper Hamsa Davis, and drummer Aaron James.
Discography
Albums
Remote Viewing (2005)
Astral Travel (2006)
The Sound of Light (2008)
Arkangelis (2009)

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