Music for Meditation
Soothing, calming and relaxing music for meditation.
|
|
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
New Age diva Enya first became widely known when her 1988 album Watermark sold 4 million copies and launched the single "Orinoco Flow." Her follow-up, Shepherd Moons, was even more successful, selling over 10 million copies despite its slightly lower grade of ethereal enchantment. In 1997 she released Paint the Sky with Stars, an assortment of her best work from these two early albums plus gems from 1995's The Memory of Trees and the soundtrack to the BBC series The Celts. The most melodic and atmospheric examples of Enya's lovely Celtic-flavored songwriting shine on this disc. Those unfamiliar with the former Clannad member will find charm in such sweet lullabies as "Marble Halls" and "China Roses" while delighting in the more energetic "Book of Days," "Storms in Africa," and "Caribbean Blue." Overall, an outstanding collection from an artist who gives New Age a good name. --Karen Karleski |
|
|
The Soul of Healing Meditations
Featuring the soothing narration of Deepak Chopra over the trancelike music of Adam Plack, The Soul of Healing Meditations serves as an introduction to meditation for neophytes and as a more advanced tool to help overcome a physical ailment and/or emotional toxicity. That may make it sound like a digital elixir, but as Chopra says in his liner notes: "We like to tell our patients (at the Chopra Center for Well Being) that the body is the best pharmacy in the world and is capable of making wonder drugs." His message here is that one can naturally prevail over serious life challenges by becoming more attuned to one's body--by relaxing and filtering out the external world, focusing on and influencing internal sensations and biorhythms, and banishing negative thoughts and focusing on the positive aspects of life. This CD is not meant as a cure-all for physical or emotional ills. Rather, it's a supplemental experience to other treatments or programs, and it shows how enlightening and empowering meditation can be when practiced properly. Its actual effects will depend upon the receptiveness of the listener. Plack's accompanying soundtrack ranges from delicate ambient tones to more active Indian music, appropriately serving the mood of each of the album's eight tracks. --Bryan Reesman |
|
|
A Day Without Rain
As each new Enya release has washed over all who have ears to hear, as each heaven-touched work leaves admirers sitting speechless in slack-jawed wonder, questions eventually come to mind: Might her layered, choral-like approach gradually become predictable or stale? Will she ever exhaust her deep reservoir of soul-stirring ideas? Remarkably, A Day Without Rain, Enya's fourth release since her 1988 breakthrough, Watermark, establishes new artistic heights for the gifted Irish vocalist and keyboardist. The project, polished and refined over a five-year period in the company of longtime collaborators Nicky Ryan (producer) and Roma Ryan (lyricist), may qualify as her best yet--a radiant, beatific collection of works that command attention with their cathedral-like resonance as they soothe your spirit with some of Enya's loveliest, most graceful voicings ever. The disc's opening three tracks (including the spellbinding "Only Time") form a gorgeous trilogy that suggest Enya has deepened her focus on the nexus where sophisticated pop and regal mysticism, the twin rivers of her singular sound, form a seamless intersection. The disc's gentle timbre is disturbed only once, and in memorable fashion, with "Tempus Vernum," a marshalling of mythic sonic forces that brings to mind the theme from the De Beers diamond commercial, but with a Celtic/Goth edge. Additional highlights abound. The closing "Lazy Days" will leave your soul dancing in a shower of flower petals and sunshine. A wonderful recording. --Terry Wood |
|
|
Canyon Trilogy: Native American Flute Music
Nakai's free improvisations on this album are based on his impressions of the Anasazi and Sinagua sites, ancient cliff dwellings that were home to communities of Native people thousands of years ago. By using the Roland SDE 3000 Digital Delay system, Nakai is able to play duets with his own echo, in an effort to emulate the echoes of the past that haunt these ruins. On this recording, Nakai's flute sounds even more plaintive than usual, as if the spirits of these forgotten ancestors had entered into the studio to fill his playing with the whispered reverberations of their ancient ways. This is one of Nakai's most deeply felt recordings, one that resonates with a deep, melancholy yearning. --j. poet |
|
|
Watermark
Enya's 1988 recording Watermark achieved landmark success with her groundbreaking use of multi-tracking technology to fuse new age and Celtic themes and instrumentation. The meticulous production defines her sound and achieves continuity even while weaving together tender ballads, piano pieces, massively layered vocal harmonies, and symphonic synthesizer movements. Although Enya's pristine voice isn't especially strong, her lead vocals possess a vulnerability that reflects the lyrics' sense of personal searching. From the ubiquitous, frothy single "Orinoco Flow" (which was used to hawk Crystal Light on TV) to the hard, bold edge of "Cursum Perficio," Enya's style remains fresh and engaging today. --Richard Price |
|
|
Dakshina
Chant is a new marketing niche in the alternative music scene, and swings from albums of straight recitations to a glut of electronica mantra CDs. A group like Rasa turns chants into cinematic excursions. Singer Donna DeLory recasts chants as pop hooks and Krishna Das growls them into guttural ruminations. But the German singer Deva Premal was doing the mantra thing long before it became a commercialized trend. On Dakshina, Premal, along with her partner, guitarist Miten, converts chants into serene, almost easy-listening refrains. Premal has a warm alto that she deploys on rhythm-free chorales of Enyaesque vocal layers to downtempo, world-beat grooves. With her chants harmonized and repeated into infinity, the effect can be like an ocean surface. It's constantly flowing and in motion, but doesn't have a lot of focus. But on songs like "Guru Rinpoche Mantra" or "Homage to Krishna," a wave rises and carries you down its face in a slo-mo free fall. Premal keeps it mostly acoustic, filling in ornamental lines with acoustic guitar, tamboura, and bansuri flutes. Only the orchestral strings occasionally get in the way. Her previous albums have often been sappy in their new age aspirations, but on Dakshina, she's more naked, stripping her sound down to a deeper emotional core. --John Diliberto |
|
|
Mirabilis
On Mirabilis, the Mediaeval Baebes drill even deeper (and wider) into their chorale sound, making music with ancient roots and timeless designs. An octet of Englishwomen with a penchant for dressing up in flouncy gothic gowns just this side of Victoria's Secret, they've released several albums mining medieval hymns and plainsong. They're still at it here, matching obscure Latin, Gaelic, and old English texts (along with the odd Robert Burns poem) to music that is often newly composed but sounds as if it came out of a Dark Ages court or monastery. But without ever playing instruments more modern than the violin, they bring a modern arranger's head to tunes that float on percussion, recorder, concertina, cittern, hurdy-gurdy, and strings. Under the musical direction of founder Katherine Blake, the harmonies are richer and more complex than on previous Baebes discs. Emily Ovenden's "Temptasyon" flies with soaring three-part harmony and lush accompaniment of strings, both modern and ancient. The Baebes get a little arty on a horror-house reading of "Tam Lin," and they perhaps had to cover "Scarborough Fayre" at some point. But they more than make up for it with the serene "Star of the Sea." This is one time you won't mind having someone get Mediaeval on you. --John Diliberto |
|
|
Sleep Soundly
One of the fundamental criticisms of New Age music is that it puts people to sleep. Here, Steven Halpern, one of the founding fathers of New Age, makes that his mission and, as you might expect, does an effective job of it. Drawing on catalog material from the early 1980s, Halpern builds an attractive collection of delicate, lighter-than-air sonic textures that nicely serves the intended purpose--to fill the silence with something prettier than white noise. Halpern does so by blending electric and acoustic piano, plus additional keyboards, to create soothing, improvisational, cloudlike musical abstractions that often convey the tranquil randomness of wind chimes in a soft breeze. The liner notes also promise your subconscious will be exposed to a series of subliminal, sleep-encouraging affirmations along the quiet, unstructured way. This may sound like so much frou-frou to the unconverted, but for anyone sincerely interested in a sleep aid, Halpern's disc is a certified snoozer, a New Age music box. Other New Age discs may accomplish the same purpose as Sleep Soundly, but few will do it as persuasively. --Terry Wood |
|
|
Shepherd Moons
The success of her first international hit, Watermark, confirmed Enya as less a singer or songwriter than a sonic architect: working with producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan, the classically-trained pianist built vaulting cathedrals of sound, framed by luminous piano, shimmering synthesizer orchestrations, and, above all, the seemingly infinite layers of vocal harmonies she plied on every song. The deeply romantic Celtic pop on its 1991 successor, Shepherd Moons, sustains the same spectrum of hushed reverie and surging, rhapsodic releases, as well as its mix of ballads, floating midtempo pieces, and forays into Celtic and Latin--and it's every bit as seductive. The terminally hip will sneer, but it's no accident that "Caribbean Blue," the best known song here, managed to sneak onto modern rock, top 40, "adult alternative" and public radio playlists. --Sam Sutherland |
|
|
Songs from a Secret Garden
Picture a square with Clannad, pianist David Lanz, Mannheim Steamroller, and the musicians of Riverdance at its corners. Somewhere within those stylistic borders you will encounter the European duo Secret Garden. The popular twosome--Irish violinist Fionnuala (fi-NOO-la) Sherry and Norwegian pianist/keyboardist Rolf Lovland--have attracted a sizable following with their heart-touching specialty: a wistful, violin-rooted, pop-folk-classical melange that often strikes the ear as a film score in search of some delicate romantic tale. Songs from a Secret Garden is the duo's debut recording from 1995, and it principally offers a series of pensive dialogues between Sherry's stately violin and Lovland's subdued piano, yielding equal measures of sweetness and melancholy. Whistles, pipes, percussion, strings, and ethereal voices serve as embellishments. At times you may sense you're being serenaded by strolling musicians with a heavy sentimental streak; at other times you may feel genuinely moved--perhaps by something as lovely as the reverential "Sigma" and its sublime, Gregorian-like choral passages. Only one uptempo tune, "The Rap," surfaces here; a few others would have been welcomed. And yes, this is the disc where you will find "Heartstrings," the composition that once smote Barbra Streisand's heart. She eventually acquired the rights to the piece, inserted lyrics, renamed it "I've Dreamed of You" (found on A Love Like Ours), and sang it to James Brolin during the couple's 1998 wedding. --Terry Wood |
|
|
Atlantis: A Symphonic Journey
Why David Arkenstone isn't a top line film composer is a mystery. His music has a cinematic orchestral sweep that seems destined for Hollywood epics. Yet, except for some small films, the silver screen has eluded Arkenstone, so he works out his cinematic ambitions on his albums. A gifted multi-instrumentalist with a wide orbit of influences, Arkenstone has a fondness for the grandiose statement and the sentimental mood. They are present in abundance on Atlantis, his paean to the mythical lost continent. His touchstones range from Coplandesque exuberance to Cecil B. DeMille biblical epics, complete with faux Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms. There are some nice touches, including some Adiemus-like chorales courtesy of Adiemus singer, Miriam Stockley. But Arkenstone's romantic arrangements swamp his compositions like the Red Sea closing on the Egyptians. Most Hollywood soundtracks are full of tried and true emotional strategies. Arkenstone utilizes them all on Atlantis--the only problem is, he doesn't have a film. --John Diliberto |
|
|
White Stones
Two factors account for the broad-based popularity of Secret Garden (the duo of Norwegian keyboardist Rolf Lovland and Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry). One: the twosome's attractive, smartly conceived mix of compatible elements including light classical, urbane New Age, and well-mannered contemporary Celtic. Two: the pair's ability to persuasively present this formula with poise and (crucially) fetching good looks in a concert film, which in 1999 enjoyed broad exposure on American public television. (The performance, A Night with Secret Garden, is available on DVD.) White Stones is Lovland and Sherry's second collaboration, and, despite a few side trips into weighty sentimentality (e.g., the heart-clutching earnestness of "First Day of Spring"), it nicely conveys the pair's simple yet endearing children-of-the-cosmos spirit. Highlights here include the disc's energized, Celtic-influenced tunes ("Steps," "Moving," "Escape") and an infectious, regal charmer ("Celebration") Lovland composed in honor of the Queen of Norway's 60th birthday. Accompanied on nearly every piece by a small orchestra or Celtic instrumentalists, Sherry's violin sometimes evokes moods of melancholy that seem better suited for a two-hanky, movie-of-the-week film score. Yet a piece such as "Hymn to Hope" shows she can also elegantly trigger deeper feelings of longing and anticipation that can linger for hours. Overall, a worthwhile listen. --Terry Wood |
|
|
Earthsongs
Earthsongs is a curious title for an album that is unrooted in the firmament and seems far removed from any traditions therein. Instead, the duo of Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry and Norwegian keyboardist Rolf Lovland make music lost in a gauzy haze of nostalgia and sentimentality. On Earthsongs, they move further from the safely exotic, Celtic-meets-New-Age sound in which they forged their early successes and float down an easy-listening path. Celtic flavors do turn up on a pair of sanitized jigs: "Reel" and "Daughters of Erin," but they have the authenticity of a theme restaurant. Bringing in pop-classical tenor Russell Watson for the maudlin ballad "Always There" doesn't help. With this album, Secret Garden takes a seat in the faux-classical lounge, a room occupied by artists like Percy Faith, Bert Kaempfert, 101 Strings, and other forgotten meisters of orchestral pop who were washed aside by the breaking waves of rock in the early '60s. --John Diliberto |
|
