The Berkeley artist discusses her new EP, recorded in two days from children’s voices, wind, and spiritual longing

Transmission 290: Interview with Jenny Gillespie Mason

Jenny Gillespie Mason is a Berkeley-based artist and producer whose work moves through the liminal spaces between ambient folk, shamanic textures, and Celtic-inflected melodies. Across her various incarnations, as The Lower Wisdom, as Sis, and now as Ship Says Om, she has concerned herself with the sacred hiding inside the domestic, with motherhood as spiritual practice, with creative surrender as a form of prayer.

Title: Dream Journal
Artist: ambient folk Berkeley music Celtic folk Dream Journal experimental ambient Integral Yoga Jenny Gillespie Mason Native Cat Recordings shamanic music Ship Says Om Sis The Lower Wisdom
Release Date: 2025-10-31
Genres: Ambient, Experimental Music, Folk, Folk Rock
Label: Native Cat Recordings

Her new EP Dream Journal, out now via Native Cat Recordings, recorded in just two days during what she calls a “music emergency,” captures the blur between waking life and something deeper: children’s voices drift through the mix alongside birdsong, wind, a dog scratching at a door—found sounds transformed into devotional fragments. The record was mixed by Bijan Sharifi in Berkeley, and its sonic world suggests Four Tet, Julianna Barwick, and Grouper.

Who were the artists that first made you want to create music, and do you still hear their influence in your work today?

I think going to see Sarah McLachlan in concert when I was a young teenager was very pivotal. Just to see her passion and artistry close up made a huge effect on me and inspired me to start writing and performing. I think her angelic vocals and that sense of purity and reaching for something higher still inspire me. I love her earlier work especially like Touch and Solace.

You described “Dream Journal” as a “mini journal of the dream state.” Can you walk us through the emotional or psychological landscape of this “dream state” you were in during those two days?

I hadn’t created music in a while and felt a strong urge to go into my studio and just let things happen. I was feeling frustrated not only artistically but as a parent; I feel I was working those emotions out in songs like Just a Little Walk and I’m Sorry Babe. And then I felt, inside of the frustration, a yearning to return to India where I’d traveled the previous year, and that manifested in Samadhi. So just like a series of dreams can help you work out emotions and bring you in touch with your inner being or to higher states, these songs seemed to help me do that, and afterwards I seemed to spiritually arrive in a new place.

Working in such a fast, “stream-of-consciousness” mode is very different from meticulous planning. What did you discover about your sound by not giving yourself time to overthink?

I think when I work in this way, my true musical essence is shared. I learned through this process, I have everything I need musically inside of me, from so many years of listening and writing, and also the emotional and transcendent experiences inside of me as well to draw from. And from that wellspring, I can draw out the music without much calculation or over-editing.

You are a student of Integral Yoga. How does the principle of music as an “offering rather than an act of ego” practically change the way you sit down to write or record?

For me, that means consecrating my work to the Divine Mother who is the feminine, creative force of God and the main principle of Integral Yoga. Lately I light a candle at a photo of my guru the Mother (Mirra Alfassa) and ask for her to work through me. When an artist is in his or her “flow,” and can’t even recall how something came to be, I think that’s ego-less creating at work.

How do elements like your “Celtic heritage” and “shamanic fascinations” manifest sonically? Are they in the melodies, the vocal textures, or the spiritual intent behind the tracks?

I think my Celtic heritage has always seeped into my melodic sensibility—there’s a simultaneous sweetness and openness and in some of the emotional vocal stylings, which I’ve embraced more over time. With the shamanic sounds, I think the percussion sounds and samples I seek out have some kind of resonance with a kind of mystical sound I’m trying to create. And I think on a whole musicians are the shamans and the priests that bring us closer to our soul truth. It is really such a beautiful gift to be able to create music and one we can choose to use for the highest good of ourselves and everyone.

What non-musical inspirations, be it a book you were reading, a painting, a film, or even a political event, fed into the “dream state” of this EP?

I was actually painting a lot at this time; and bits of my paintings are used for the EP and Samadhi single cover. I often find painting and music go together during creative bursts. I’d also just read the book Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt about a mother’s love for her addict daughter and was so blown away by the artistry. I think the raw compassion and emotional truths of that book, and all the intensity that comes with parenting, may have fed into the EP.

Are there any visual artists, poets, or filmmakers whose work you feel shares a similar “textural” or “quietly transcendent” quality with the music you’re making?

Jean Valentine‘s poems: dream-inspired, very quiet but also strange, in a beautiful way. The film I’ll Be Your Mirror by Bradley Rust Grey: slow, quiet, with deep emotional moments, and just so beautiful. For my new music I’m writing now, Savitri by Sri Aurobindo, the spiritual poem-epic about the Divine Mother, and Parsifal, the opera by Wagner, which I just saw. Hard to say how it’s manifesting, just that I know it’s there.

You’ve previously released music as Sis and The Lower Wisdom. What prompted the new artistic identity of “Ship Says Om,” and what does that name signify for you?

I knew this music was very different from the Sis project, which has from the outset of its forming in 2018 encompassed more of a full band sound that encompasses RnB, jazz and pop. I had really wanted to do something ambient and instrumental which I’d explored on Sis tracks like Gazelle Rites and Jugaspa. Ship Says Om comes from a story told by the Mother (born Mirra Alfassa) who along with Sri Aurobindo is the primary figure of Integral Yoga. From the ashram in a coastal town in southern India where she lived, she heard a sound in the distance and could have sworn it was saying “OM.” When someone told her it was a ship, she affirmed that the ship was simply praising God with its own sound. To me, it is a story that tells us everything is alive and everything is a part of God, especially sounds.

What other sounds or genres are you curious to experiment with as Ship Says Om?

Right now I am writing new material. I’m using the Orchid synth and Arturia Minifreak which is giving it a fuller sound, but I’m also keen to write more on my acoustic guitar.

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