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.
BeguiledTim 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.
Tantric ChillSoulfood/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.
Enjoy!!
I love you!!
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