Saints and Aliens (out fall 2025) is the place where a handful of homespun sonic experiments met with the crux of a spiritual seeker’s timeline. In between projects, in fall 2024, Jenny Gillespie Mason, the multi-instrumentalist and singer, remembered some song files of a recording she made in a studio in Oakland a few years prior. The sessions had heavily featured the percussionist Pope Flyne on talking drum, djembe, and conga but the songs did not quite feel they were going anywhere, so were left untouched. Still, Mason had been astounded by the power and delicacy of Flyne's percussion performances and kept thinking about the beauty of the sounds.

On a long plane ride from New York City back to the Bay Area, Mason decided to start taking the files of these lost sessions and cutting and pasting them into new shapes, letting herself be guided mainly by the voices in the percussion. At home, Mason dove into the Free Sound library with some of her usual keywords: “shamanic,” “Celtic,” and “holy,” as well as “brass." From there, she began to paint layers of samples, synth, Rhodes, and vocals, to create new songs, as well as writing a few new songs from scratch inspired by the sound she was creating. Sending the songs to a trusted longtime musical ally, producer and bassist Doug Stuart, helped shaped the songs towards even more dynamic terrain.

The more personal songs include "Wolf Child" written for her eight year old son when he was going through a difficult time, and "Crocus Man" written for a longtime friend who across the years of his life exudes positivity and loving energy. There are other more universal songs about the Divine Mother ("Big Bend/Jai Ma") the emergence of the soul ("Luce," "Yoga of the Soul's Release"), the grail within ("Grailtime.") Saxophonist Nicole McCabe contributes haunting, expressive solos throughout the album, and Brijean Murphy adds her vibrant and shining percussion parts. The music created seemed to stretch beyond the idea of a solo project of Sis, and so the Lower Wisdom was born—that Gnostic concept of the physical Earth life containing the seeds and secrets of the highest feminine wisdom. The finished sound of Saints and Aliens, a work that began in exploring the nature of process and time, remains open-ended: mysterious, wild, and soothing. It is a step towards creating music for the Divine, more so than for anything or anyone, while attempting to speak to the secret soul within the listener.