East Forest is the project of Krishna-Trevor Oswalt, and since 2008 it has moved between ambient, neoclassical, electronic and experimental sound. Rolling Stone called the result "lush," NPR called it "blissful," and the two words point at the same thing: layered, sustained textures with a warmth that avoids syrupy sentiment. The pacing is the first thing to notice. Tracks breathe over long durations, tempos are slow or absent, and arrangements leave space around each tone rather than filling it. The extreme case is Music for Mushrooms, a five-hour album that treats duration itself as material.
A caution on specifics: the artist's own materials do not itemize instrumentation release by release, so the exact instruments on any given piece are best confirmed in the credits on Spotify or Apple Music. What can be said is that the catalogue reads more as environment than as song. Anyone expecting verse-chorus structure will find rooms to inhabit instead. The live documents, including Seedling (Live at Columbus Museum of Art) and Dark Thoughts - Live (New Earth Ceremony), show the studio pieces reshaped by an audience's presence and a room's acoustics.
The bio names no guru, lineage or formal school, so none will be assigned here. The honest picture is overlapping threads. Oswalt studied film at Vassar College, trained at the IATT at Harvard University, and earned an MFA from the Moscow Art Theatre. That theatrical grounding continues to shape the architecture of his concerts and events, which are staged as sequences rather than strings of songs.
Musically, the work sits in the contemplative stream of ambient and neoclassical composition that feeds today's meditation and sound-healing scene. Titles such as Morning Prayers and Durga Yoga Nidra (Live) borrow the vocabulary of prayer and yoga nidra, and his collaboration with Ram Dass ties the project to the Western contemplative movement that absorbed Hindu and Buddhist practice. The framing is contemplative rather than doctrinal, which leaves room for listeners who prefer a secular reading.
What sets East Forest apart is the treatment of function as a compositional problem. Many artists in this space make pleasant background tracks. Oswalt builds music around the architecture of a use: a guided session, a psychedelic practice, a live hall. Music for Mushrooms, released in 2019, was written to accompany a complete psilocybin session, so its arc is designed around a session rather than a listening mood. He directed and scored the 2024 feature documentary of the same name, which played theatrically in over 100 markets in the US and internationally.
That purposefulness reaches into research. He wrote the primary music for the Set and Setting study led by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, and active studies at UCSF draw on his compositions. Few ambient composers have their work heard in concert halls and clinical settings alike.
Ram Dass is the most significant presence. The psychologist, spiritual teacher and psychedelic pioneer worked with East Forest in 2018 and 2019, lending spoken word to the project. Around that Ram Dass album, a circle formed. Krishna Das, the Grammy-nominated kirtan vocalist, provided vocals. Laraaji, the ambient zither player, contributed reworks. Peter Broderick, a Portland-based multi-instrumentalist and composer, collaborated on the Ram Dass reworks and on the Burren album between 2019 and 2023.
Trevor Hall, a spiritual reggae-folk singer-songwriter, has toured with East Forest and featured on his tracks since 2017. Marieme, a Senegalese vocalist, is featured prominently on Music for the Deck of the Titanic. The bio also lists Jon Hopkins, Kishi Bashi and Max Cooper, a spread that runs from devotional voice to electronic and experimental production.
Begin gently. Morning Prayers (2025, eight tracks) is the softest entry and suits early-morning listening. Lovingly - Guided (2025) is the logical next step if you want guided work. For a broader view of the composer's writing, Music for The Deck of The Titanic (Deluxe Edition, sixteen tracks, January 2024) offers a neoclassical doorway. Curious about the room? Sample Seedling (Live at Columbus Museum of Art) or Durga Yoga Nidra (Live) before committing to a full album. Save Music for Mushrooms for when you can give it a dedicated sitting.
Some things may surprise you. The pace is slower than most "relaxing" playlists, and the pieces reward one uninterrupted listen more than shuffle. Many releases are explicitly oriented toward psychedelic or ceremonial contexts, as with Lovingly: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, vol. III. If you want drop-driven electronic music, dance-floor rhythm or conventional songs, this is not that. The slowness is the point, not a compromise.
In the wider conscious-music landscape, East Forest occupies a distinctive middle position. The catalogue shares ground with sound baths, meditation music and new age, yet collaborations with Jon Hopkins and Max Cooper place him beside electronic and experimental producers rather than only inside devotional circles. Compared with producers who treat ambient as pure texture, he leans toward ritual, duration and purpose-built sessions. He has released more than 30 albums on labels including Domino, Ghostly and Mercury KX, which gives the work an indie-label pedigree uncommon in the genre.
The audience is committed rather than massive. Spotify shows roughly 7,900 followers, which suits a contemplative following more than mainstream streaming reach. His influence shows up elsewhere: in clinical rooms, theaters, and live settings that run from Red Rocks Amphitheatre to Grace Cathedral. For listeners who care about what music does as much as how it sounds, that is the reason to start here.