(This audio includes sound from freesound.org by user wjoojoo titled ‘emesis’ which can be found here. )

In 1970, composer Pauline Oliveros coined the term Deep Listening, which she described as "a lifelong practice.” She continued the thought by saying, “The more I listen, the more I learn to listen. Deep Listening involves going below the surface of what is heard, expanding to the whole field of sound while finding focus. This is the way to connect with the acoustic environment, all that inhabits it, and all that there is." She spent much of her life (she died in 2016) and work sharing and exploring this concept, through workshops, scores, meditations, books and trainings, which live on through the Center for Deep Listening.

In this strange version of existence we are experiencing, we constantly hear sounds around us—the ping of phone and email notifications, the wailing of sirens, the radio in a Lyft/Uber/taxi, the grocery store clerk asking how our day is—but how often are we really listening to any of them?

At In Sheep's Clothing, a Los Angeles Hi-Fi listening bar and online music resource, they invite their guests to participate in a musical Deep Listening experience with curated vinyl selections played on a top-notch sound system. Since the pandemic caused them to shutter their original location in the Arts District last year, this summer they created a cozy, inviting pop-up space at NeueHouse Hollywood. An event where the main purpose is to really listen to the music feels revolutionary and so simple at the same time.

When I asked In Sheep’s Clothing Editor-In-Chief and popup programming lead Phil Cho what he hopes attendees get from experiencing music in this way, he said: "I hope they start to think about sound and try to apply some of the things that they possibly learned or felt from the experience and be more conscious with their listening in their daily lives. Maybe people will start to set aside time during their day to really listen to something at home. You don't have to have nice speakers to really focus on listening.

Each one of us on the team does quite a bit of Deep Listening now. We really feel like it helps you as a person, health-wise and mentally, the same way meditation does. I think it really helps you center, to just take a pause from your day to really focus on music."

The In Sheep’s Clothing popup events have been going on since June and will wrap up on Sept. 23, with four weekly evening listening parties from Wednesday to Saturday. No matter when you show up, you're likely to discover a new artist, track, regional subgenre, or elements of a track you never noticed before. The programming lineup is eclectic and inviting, with some evenings dedicated to one artist, for example seemingly polar opposites Sade and Aphex Twin, and others focused on a specific subgenre, like global psychedelic sounds, contemporary guitar music or Japanese experimental.

In between listening sessions, you can shop ISC’s well-curated vinyl selection, which is reflective of the wide range of artists and sounds ISC gives love to in the listening room and on their editorial website. In Sheep's Clothing is all about the music, guiding you to explore it deeper and find new artists and sounds you love. All you need are your ears open, mouth closed and phone on silent.

Their team turned what is usually a conference room in Neuhouse’s hip coworking space into a calm, cozy listening space, with a high-end custom sound system built by Commonwave Hi-Fi to fill it with warm, rich, resonate sound. ISC is inspired by Japanese listening bars, or jazz kissas, especially the 95-year-old classical music haven, Lion.

Cho added that discovery is an important part of what he hopes attendees experience as well. "I hope that they start to discover new sounds. Whatever is presented, maybe it piques their interest on something. If you attended global psychedelic sounds...and you were just into psychedelic music from the United States, maybe you learned something. [Hopefully] it was like, 'Oh wow there is amazing Brazilian or Argentinian psychedelic scene that I can dive into.'"

At Classic Album Sundays events, which are held around the globe, the intent is more about rediscovery and uncovering new layers within beloved music you've probably heard many times before. The event series was launched in 2010 by radio host/DJ/journalist Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy in London, initially as a casual gathering of friends at her home to listen to an album on vinyl in its entirety, eventually expanding to monthly public events in eight countries.

When there's not a pandemic, New York City's Classic Album Sundays events are held by Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele, of music fanzine Love Injection, at various music hot spots across the city, most recently Nowadays in Queens. Classic Album Sundays also provide context on the project being presented, with the New York editions often benefiting from close proximity to engineers and/producers involved with presented albums, resulting in audiences being able to hear directly about the intricacies of its creation.

"When we're doing events—we're not doing them at the moment—we would give a run of show on the event pages and talk about what people could expect. It sometimes took some shifting of the expectation of what we're coming to do together in the space," Bertisch explained.

Similarly to ISC, they see Classic Album Sundays as a way for listeners to experience music on a Hi-Fi sound system they may not have access to elsewhere, without distractions.

"The elephant in the room is that the retail cost of the system that we present music on is extremely expensive," Raffaele said.

"More than anything else, we are excited to present music on a system that allows the music to be presented as the artist intended it. That's the main goal. Unfortunately, so much of the music that we hear today is so compressed to fit into the convenient modes of streaming or whatever it is. We love the fact that we can charge very cheap, or sometimes the event is sponsored and free, for people to experience and hear that [sound system] and not reserve that for the elite."

For both events, a high quality sound system is a tool to help attendees dive further into the music and out of the constant commotion of our lives and minds.

"Ultimately, I think one of the biggest draws or the higher purpose of the sessions are Deep Listening and paying attention, paying undivided attention to music," Bertisch added.

"Personally, we did a lot of it during the lockdown. You know, it was quite strict here in New York, and we were all of a sudden totally uprooted from our daily lives. Whatever sort of break we could get from the dumpster fire outside was putting on a whole record, dimming the lights, laying on the couch, and just doing nothing else but listening to music in this meditative state. There's an increased consciousness around Deep Listening, around more intentional listening, that I think people are coming out of [the pandemic with]."

While Deep Listening events are not about watching a performance, they do explore the concept of performing recorded music in a much different context than a DJ set. The DJ, their visuals and lasers have become something we've placed on an elevated stage, yet one of the early precursors of iconic house music night clubs—and Murphy's inspiration for Classic Album Sundays was not about the DJ.

"The Loft and David Mancuso is kind of the foundation for the way that we experience dancing and clubbing, and informed a lot of our approach to presenting music," Raffaele pointed out.

"He wanted to present the music in the purest way, the way that the artist intended it. So much so that one of the key tenets of his practice was that he didn't mix records. The record would end and people would applaud. And then he'd present another record. That still kind of feels odd today to experience because it's just so uncommon."

At the heart of it, Mancuso—and now, Classic Album Sundays and In Sheep's Clothing—was on the quest for the purest sound so he and his guests could experience records in a deeper, almost spiritual way.

"It wasn't a place that existed in the capitalist system, there was no money exchange after you got inside, everything was free and shared. He invited people into his home, so every week he would tweak the system—add something, take something away—to try and maintain the purest signal path, essentially. When the DJ mixer was invented, he added it to the setup and he realized that it was noisy, so he took it out of the chain and said, 'I don't need to blend. I just put one record on at a time,'" Raffaele added.

As Raffaele notes, a quality sound system can get you closer to the artists, bringing you back to the moments they recorded the album.

"What a good system is allowing you to do is really feel the performance of art. The black hole that you can never reach the end of is kind of this idea that you can close your eyes and imagine that there's performers [there]. The better the system is, the more transparent [it is]. You want to be able to close your eyes and believe there's an artist in front of you. I think it's the performance of the artists that we're really trying to capture with the components."

Bertisch, a DJ herself, highlights what she sees as a fallacy of DJs being considered performers. "I wouldn't consider myself a better DJ, because I've only been DJing seven years, but I also see a whole new generation of young DJs coming up with new tools, new information. This idea of a performance, or a DJ show—I come from the old way of referring to DJs and this idea of a DJ being a performer is something that to me feels a bit jarring… The performance was done the moment that the music was recorded, you're simply a vehicle for conveying it."

Cho's thoughts on performing recorded music echoed theirs. (The New York Times observed in a 2019 review of ISC and other American listening bars that ISC’s DJs were "basically anonymous," in contrast to the other spaces.)

"I've never thought about it in that way, that it's kind of a performance. I think the entire team agrees with this, we try not to have us be the people at the forefront, hoping that what we're doing is not a performance, but really just presenting recorded music in the best way possible. We're true lovers of music, so we're really just trying to create a space where it's experienced in the proper way. I think the performing aspect of it is more just kind of creating the perfect space for it," Cho explained.

"And I think a lot of times, the people who are really seeking deep Hi-Fi, that is kind of the quest, getting as close to these performers as possible."