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Iasos, Celestial Soul Portrait

2013 | Label: Numero Group / SC Distribution

By Richard Gehr eMusic Contributor

06.25.13 With its minimalist sounds and big ideas, New Age music nearly always promises more than it delivers. But whimsical excess is precisely what makes Greek-born, mono-monikered Iasos’s “inter-dimensional” creations more convincing than the average “Hearts of Space” radio spin. Celestial Self Portrait collects Iasos’s greatest hits from the ’70s, when he was translating what he has described as “crystal giggling energy,” as well as other gifts bestowed by angelic cohorts, into spacious sonic architectures.

More is generally more here. The twangy, swooping double-necked slide guitar of “Rainbow Canyon” is much… more »

Ketil Bjørnstad, La Notte

2013 | Label: ECM

By Steve Holtje eMusic Contributor

06.11.13 La Notte was commissioned by the Norway Molde International Jazz Festival, from which this 2010 concert recording comes. The work, which blends jazz improvisation and new age meditation, is familiar territory for both the label and pianist/composer Bjørnstad (who is celebrating his 20th anniversary on ECM), but with a few twists. A tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni, it occasionally (as on the waltz “II”) partakes of the Italian filmmaker’s exuberance, offering contrast to the pensive beauty for which Bjørnstad is noted. Some movements of this eight-piece suite use a slightly larger… more »

Will Dutta, Parergon

2012 | Label: Just Music

By Chris Nickson eMusic Contributor

05.14.12 Will Dutta’s music lies at the nexus where modern classical, New Age, and ambient electronica meet. He draws from all of them to create his own sonic geography: Sometimes it is lushly beautiful, other times it sounds as tortured and harsh as modern life, with textures that range from the stark purity of his piano to sounds heavily modified and manipulated by a bevy of producers.

It’s impossible to avoid the shadows of modern pioneers like Philip Glass and Brian Eno here, and Parergon (the word, by the way, means subordinate… more »

Cynth, Flute Medicine

Label: Cynth / CD Baby

By Robert Phoenix eMusic Contributor

04.22.11 While this disc does not specifically tout its healing qualities, the way it's produced and played gives it a natural healing vibration. Cynth is a flautist based out of Los Angeles who plays a combination of bamboo, Native American and brindle flutes. (She also acquits herself quite well on the panpipes.) The thing I love about this disc is how the flutes are overdubbed, often to the accompaniment of Tibetan bowls and bells, blowing like a clear breeze through the cathedral of the mind. But it's heart-centered music as well,… more »