June 30, 2008

• Nothing but Music!

  

  Celtic Passage
  Dierdre ni
  Chinneide
  2007

  The beautiful tenor voice of Ireland’s Diredre ni Chinneide
  (pronounced “Deer-druh nay Cunay-dee”) will remind one instantly of Celtic
  artists such as Enya, which is to say that Chinneide brings the haunting
  melancholy as only the most gifted of Celtic muses can, the sort where every
  windswept coastal rock and cranny stands out tall, lush, and green in our
  collective archaic-romantic memory. A member of the group Mo Run Searc, in
  addition to a solo artist at numerous Celtic festivals (including an audience of
  the Dalai Lama), Chinneide is a master of both Celtic and English lyrical
  phrasing. Her Celtic Passage brings listeners plenty of both. Navigating
  a thick instrumental current of traditional Irish instruments (tin whistle,
  flute, bodhran, Celtic harp, etc.), as well as surging synths, tinkling pianos,
  and operatic orchestral crescendos, Chinneide’s powerful pipes encompass the
  heartrending, slow-ballad end of the Celtic spectrum, as well as diving
  undaunted into ! the maelstroms of wailing, Latvian Woman’s Choir-style
  roundelays and power chords. The result is perfect for long rainy drives or long
  runs along misty green hills, with power aplenty to make you take courage as you
  climb each new high hill.

  “No one could know the day would come / When
  soldiers took those mother’s sons,” Chinneide sings in the haunting “Pieta,” her
  voice slicing through the rolling blackness, aided by a high, arching tin
  whistle cry. From such dirgelike expressions of social outrage the album wafts
  toward the light, to hopeful tunes like the lilting string section and plaintive
  flute and bagpipes of the instrumental “Return.” After so much yearning and
  mourning, the beautiful chorus of “Arise My Love” is like a rainbow of sunshine
  streaming through the moody purple clouds: “The shadows that haunted your dreams
  in the night / My reveal to your heart there are wonders in sight.” As the drums
  sound and the guitars and flutes all rise to attention, you can hear the surging
  hope and universal love come erupting out of Chinneide’s soul through her
  beautiful, operatic cadences.

  In acknowledging the sorrow and tragedy of
  her people—and all people who have suffered under the heel of war and
  oppression—Chinneide is able to forgive and transcend. You can feel the sun on
  the back of your neck, the cold fog melt off your face to be replaced by
  healing, forgiving sunlight. Yet even in an album as forgiving and healing as
  this one comes the understanding that the struggle goes on and on; we put our
  load down to sit and sing a spell, but then the trek continues. As Chinneide
  sings in “Siochain:” “Life and death are rooted / In the undivided tree. / Meet
  me at a place, where we both can freely be.” Take the Celtic Passage, and you
  may find yourself already there, no matter how tempestuously the storm around
  you wages.
  

  	Listen to all sound clips from this CD
  “Pieta” “Arise my Love” “Siochain/ Peace”

  Buy this CD

  

  Beguiled
  Tim Story
  
  1991

  Tim Story makes classical-ambient piano music in a modern,
  minimalist style—the missing link between the ironic chamber miniatures of
  composer Eric Satie and the drifting contemporary minimalism of Harold Budd. His
  music calms and inspired, incites and pacifies, taking the beauty and depth of
  the classical form, while leaving its pomp and stoicism behind. Beguiled
  (his sixth album) finds Story in a Zen-like place of stillness and good humor;
  there’s a mellow, forgiving bliss to counteract the melancholy so inherent in
  chamber music. Tracks flow and drift in deceptively simple patterns, with smooth
  synthesizer overtones, moody cello accents, and subtle, back-of-the-room washes
  of mood and atmosphere. Beguiled conjures dark and cloudy afternoons
  along deserted highways in the middle of nowhere, mountain scenery, and the
  feeling a giant spirit is watching you from behind the curtain of purple
  cumulonimbus majesty above.

  The title track opens on a gentle three-note
  cycle that slowly winds its way forward, recalling the soundtrack music you
  might hear in a romantic drama, watching a professor drive to campus, autumn
  leaves blowing hazily along the traffic signs, him with a mix of ennui and
  hopeful love for a coed consuming him. That sense of hope and vague unease
  continues into “Delires,” which swoons with the addition of a flutelike (synth)
  lead melody.

  Whether you use this album for meditation or just listen to
  it as aural wallpaper, one is bound to be seriously adrift on sonic waves of
  calm by the time they reach “Eyelids of the Sea,” a beautiful track that
  gradually coalesces out of a primordial ambient fog to cast beautiful rays of
  light through the opaque color fields. Rays of melodic purity arc above the gray
  mist and then sink back below, as what sounds like a female yowling, or a siren,
  or a bird comes forward to say its piece, then sinks back down into the
  comforting murk. It’s got class to spare, with an overarching regality that
  links it to the classical pieces of Chopin and the aforementioned Satie, but
  with the chakra-aligning benevolence and analog warmth of the Reiki and yoga
  music set. Beguiled is, in its quiet way, a masterpiece of minimalist
  beauty, all the more so for being accessible, surprising, heartfelt, and
  deliriously soothing.
  

  	Listen to all sound clips from this CD
  “Beguiled” “Delires” “Eyelids of the Sea”

  Buy this CD

  

  Tantric Chill
  Soulfood/Jadoo
  2006

  Soulfood and Jadoo are respectively a DJ outfit and a groovy
  multicultural ensemble who really get together and make it happen for Tantric
  Chill. Here exotic Indian, Turkish, and Arabic flavors meld into chilled
  grooves presided over by sexy, whispered female vocals (as on the alluring
  “Falling Rain”), sound effects, and the odd harmonium or guitar. The boilerplate
  for this sort of music is 1990s Moby, the sound of youth exploring the new
  horizons of being and perception while exhausted on the 4 a.m. dance floor in
  some sunny paradise like Ibiza or the French Riviera. Soulfood takes that vibe
  and preserves it in deep-sleep liquid amber, adding a wealth of moods and
  flavors. It’s a slumber party and kids from four corners of the globe are
  chilling out on the sofa, dancing in pairs or alone on the balcony, or gazing up
  at the innumerable stars.

  With drowsy piano melodies floating high and
  outside over tumbling waterfalls of vocals and percussion, there’s never any
  shortage of sexy ear-candy alongside the beats and vibes that get the body
  moving slowly, languidly, discovering the music of the second chakra, where
  sexuality infuses all physicality with an archaic poeticism. “Drifting” is a
  good example of how it’s done, with acoustic guitar strums and piano notes
  highlighting the ennui, like glistening light along a darkening lake surface of
  cooing female vocals and downtempo beats. “Kaif Kun” features a vocoder and
  echo-drenched male vocal, pleading in some unrecognizable patois over glaciers
  of melting, melancholy synthesizer. It’s a little jolt of the earth amidst all
  this sky, light rain, and bright swirling stars.

  There’s no doubt of
  this music’s effectiveness in creating the chill-out mood that is its obvious
  goal. Soulfood and Jadoo have this down to a science. They know how much is
  enough and when to say when, be it just a repeating whisper of a melody and some
  barely perceptible fringe percussion. Each track unfolds like a slow, sexy
  dream, one that merges into the next, taking listeners on a relaxing voyage
  along the rivers of their own kundalini energies.
  

  	Listen to all sound clips from this CD
  “Falling Rain” “Drift” “Kaif Kun”

  Buy this CD

  

  Enjoy!!

  I love you!!

  

  • 12:36 pm
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