Origin Story
Back in 2009, Carly was working in art and fashion in New York City and going back and forth to Peru to commune with healers in the Amazon. Meanwhile, in Northern California, Paul—a native of the remote Isle of Wight—arrived in the States for the very first time to produce one of his biggest projects to date. One of the musicians in that session mentioned that there were spots open in a plant medicine ceremony that weekend. Paul claimed one of them—not knowing it would include a fated friendship, too.
During the ceremony and afterward, Carly and Paul connected on their shared affinity for mantras and intention, and the way that music functions as an opening into inner realms. In short order, their connection became an ideation hub; an ongoing inquiry into what it would mean to bring an updated soundtrack to the realm of Western meditation and journeying. What it would mean to create a new wave of immersive aural experiences for modern spiritual seekers in this current cultural moment.
After Carly first experienced the potency of breathwork in 2016, she began sketching new and expanded visions that were about more than just a musical accompaniment. Paul picked up those threads and they dove deeper into the science and sentience of music; the way mixing and mastering and purposeful phonic schema can allow for inner unpatterning and repatterning. They studied the tonality of chants and the rhythmic timbre of Tibetan monks, Sanskrit prayers, choral traditions, and other ages-old lineages of group sounding. In the earliest iterations of Carly’s Heart Song Retreats, the community aided in research and development by taking part in story-sharing, interactive musical loops, and improvisation.
Eventually, a channel of allowing, transformation, and integration emerged; a channel inclusive of but also above and beyond traditional language and linear progressions. A channel to be used either in addition to plant medicine, or as an alternative to it.
As lifelong students, as experienced designers, as believers, as parents, as children, as humans on a swiftly turning planet, Paul and Carly began to understand that something called Infinite Crescendo could work like an antidote, like a release, like a tool for transformation—for radical and curative unshackling. A wild and healing crossing-over, and a coming back home. Over and over again.