eMusic Review 0
There's an appropriate stateliness to this historic royal music. Like gamelan, it's very percussive, while the use of xylophones lends a questing, childlike innocence to the tentative melodies. Yet among all the regality there's also a fair amount of strangeness; on both "The Floating Moon" and "The Starlit Night," for instance, the singing takes on a disorienting quality, as if it had been recorded backwards. It's, well, just ,weird. But it's also completely captivating &8212; how do they do it? More than anything, though, this is pictorial music, creating lush, full images evident in titles like "Sounds of The Surf" and "The Heart of The Sea." The musicians work like painters, building stroke on stroke until the picture is complete. It might not have the pomp of Western courts, but the majesty and pageantry are certainly there. The music doesn't overwhelm, but seduces with its delicate, fragile beauty.
