Somehow I missed it the first time around in 2014, but a resurrected news story on “the most relaxing song ever” has been making the rounds again recently, the story appearing everywhere from Teen Vogue to Business Insider.

The 8-minute song is by the band Marconi Union and was composed with the assistance of the British Academy of Sound Therapy.  Personally, I think the song is just average and not more or less relaxing than many other songs I’ve heard. I find the video for the song much more interesting (than again, I guess the point of the music is that it’s not supposed to be interesting).

It features what appear to be a squadron of illuminated drones performing an aerial ballet over a remote lake, with a misty mountain in the background, perhaps at dawn. The whole effect is otherworldly and mesmerizing.  There’s not much information about the video itself on the net, but with a bit of sleuthing, I found out it was filmed in the Lake District of England, at Scales Tarn (the name of the pond/lake) on the mountain Blencartha (also known as Saddleback.)

The videographer, Richie Johnston, is from the nearby town of Penrith and filmed one drone doing all the acrobatics. He then slowed the film down drastically in the studio and also added multiple layers of video to create the illusion of many drones flying in unison.  All done brilliantly, if you ask me.  His website features some similarly hallucinogenic photographs as part of something called a “spherical mapping venture.”

While watching the “Weightless” video I like to imagine a scenario where I’m on an early morning hike alone and come over a hill and see the drones – which of course, in my imagination would be UFO’s, not drones – doing their mysterious choreographed weightless air dance.  Do they know I’m there? Of course they do, they’re alien craft, so they must be all knowing, right?  I hope they’re friendly….