orangeupurple

Very pretty, exquisite, utterly lovely, healing, uplifting and gorgeous instruments, piano, strings, all so very heavenly (These words all being my initial thoughts as I listened to the first two tracks). This artists searches for true beauty, finds it and paints it for us in the liquid melodies on this album. I would describe these tunes as projecting peace and hope and flowing with the gentle instrumental layers which are not overburdened with a barrage of unnecessary sound. Some of my favorite melodies were the lightly jazz flavored "Somewhere in Time" and the Latino "Momentos de Amor" with their joyfully lilting and danceable beats. This is an unbeatable album of enjoyable tunes. Not one song misses the mark.

Well, we must go into the album with the expectation that this is experimental and will be pushing against the boundaries of what we are most familiar with, and thus we will not be shocked but pleasantly surprised! We also need to think of each instrumental entity as an unique individual with personality, temperament, hopes, and feelings in an album such as this. I would also describe this music as sometimes being on the avant-garde side of jazz.

I don't know what that percussive snapping was in "Japanese Blues" but it gave the piece a shock like effect to the ears, along with the minimalistic weaving in and out of the other instruments. Very interesting and unique. The drums, wind and piano in "a drummer" were very nice and seemed to come from everywhere. The piece "sad question" seemed to strive to have a distinctive melody and was actually quite lovely, sounding like a late night, lonely and sad song. The different instruments singing off of the others' tunes seemed oblivious to each other.

I loved the use of instruments in "get it softly!" which was confusing with flashes of exquisite musical sound flying in from here and there. There was a heart beat thrumming running along the base of this piece with the saxophone flying over the top of the other instruments.

"Scratch" was somewhat indeterminate sounding with quite a dissonance of instruments. It had lots of interesting and unusual percussion sounds and the lovely sax. I really liked the intro to "joyful ride" with the bass and sax and other instruments ambling by to introduce themselves. Delightful.

I liked the give and take with the instruments in "little ocean waves" and the Asian sounding "rain splashing down" was like a Haiku, simple and descriptive. And "happy child singing" made me smile. Good use of sound integrated in with the voices of children.

Overall I think all the musical and instrumental layers were clean sounding, making a good presentation, and all were added as a painter adds each stroke of paint to a masterpiece. I am not capable of determining whether this album is a masterpiece or not, but I really enjoyed its unique outlook and expressive nature. To me it was like reading and interpreting some excellent, quality poetry. Its good for the brain cells and quite enjoyable.

I could almost see them. Those peaceful plateaus where-of you speak. Your music was nice - very floaty and relaxing. Almost as good as a vacation; I could feel my jaws unclench and my shoulders relax and my breathing slow down. This, almost eighteen minutes of ambient music, is just as advertised. Good job.

I would call the music on this album the epitome of electronic music. Its electric not only because of its creation but because of its emotionally thrilling nature. I could see futuristic machines and cogs whirling with robots in attendance. Shiny and bright with lots of light contrasting the darkness. This music had its dark spaces with that brilliant blue-white light jumping out and flashing and whirling.

"Samson" in particular had some very sharp and pointy streaks of light which seemed to strike the center of my brain. Some were shaped like leaves on a tree, thousands of silver bright leaves. Falling around me. Smothering me. As the end approached I felt comforted and less stressed, relieved even, because the sounds were softer, and softly appearing more as a fog than a sharp edged entity. Perhaps that's what dying feels like.

"Arise" and "Pendulum" were a little more traditionally ambient but still had that hard edged exploratory probing feel to it. And then came "Hold Back" a bit more hopping, a bit more joyous but still with those black spaces and those sharply bright drilling lights flying by. There was a nice vocal in there with tin pan and some rhythm to enjoy too. I think my favorite track was "Idolater," it had a wormy way about it, digging into my ears and thus into my brain, visually a monster, dark red and bloated.

This is not the relaxing kind of ambient (if that is what you want to call this style of music) because it keeps you on pins and needles waiting to see what comes around the corner. You couldn't call it beautiful music but you would have to agree that it is thrilling and exciting.

I can't honestly say which version I liked the best. Maybe I liked the third version the least, but it had something kind of Celtic or magical about it which I can't really put my finger on, but which gave it some extra charm. It was all very good, but essentially this twenty minute album was all one song with three slightly different versions. It was oddly alluring and mesmerizing but it became hard to take that near-chant vocal, "Fever," after three listens. I was trying to analyze the three versions but the voice finally just got too annoying. I really liked the instrumentals and some of the other ambient sounds. The melody is very charming and is a wonderful composition. One version in an album of other like genre tunes would be perfect.