2013年10月13日日曜日

[781] va I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990


Label: Light in the Attic

Catalog#: LITA 107
Format: CD, LP, Compilation 
Country: US
Released: 2013
DISCOGS  OFFICIAL  AMAZON

1. Gurdjieff / de Hartmann - The Struggle of The Magicians part three

2. Gail Laughton - Pompeii 76 A.D.
3. Nesta Kerin Crain - Gongs In The Rain
4. Wilburn Burchette - Witch's Will
5. Iasos - Formentera Sunset Clouds
6. Steven Halpern - Seventh Chakra Keynote B (violet)
7. Joel Andrews - Seraphic Borealis
8. Constance Demby - Om Mani Padme Hum
9. Daniel Emmanuel - Arabian Fantasy
10. Don Slepian - Awakening (excerpt)
11. Laraaji - Unicorns In Paradise (excerpt)
12. Peter Davison - Glide V
13. Joanna Brouk - Lifting Off
14. Michael Stearns - As The Earth Kissed The Moon (excerpt)
15. Aeoliah - Tien Fu: Heaven's Gate (excerpt) 
16. Daniel Kobialka - Blue Spirals
17. Larkin - Two Souls Dance
18. Judith Tripp - Li Sun
19. Mark Banning - Lunar Eclipse (excerpt) 
20. Alice Damon - Waterfall Winds
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シアトルのレーベルLight in the Atticによりコンパイルされた米ニューエイジ音楽のアンソロジー「I Am The Center」。60年代のヒッピー文化に大きな影響を与えたアルメニア生まれの神秘家Georges GurdjieffとThomas de Hartmannによるバレエ曲にはじまり、Ridley Scott監督の映画「Blade Runner」ではサウンドトラックとして使用されたGail Laughtonのハープ、Nesta Kerin Crainのメディテーショナルなゴングから、開拓者であるSteven HalpernやIasos、Laraaji(この10月下旬には初期録音を含むコンピレーション"Celestial Music 1978-2011"をリリース予定)といったよく知られる音楽家の名が連なっています。3枚組のヴァイナル・エディションは11月19日にリリース。


“Sound created the universe. It wasn’t a word. Sound created atoms; sound and light are the original manifesting principles for worlds… A musician sources that primeval, eternal sound, and it comes out as music.” – Constance Demby
Forget everything you know, or think you know, about new age, a genre that has become one of the defining musical-archaeological explorations of the past decade.
I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America, 1950-1990 is the first major anthology to survey the golden age of new age and reveal the unbelievable truth about the genre.
For new age, at its best, is a reverberation of psychedelic music, and great by any standard. This is analog, handmade music communicating soul and spirit, often done on limited means and without commercial potential, self-published and self-distributed. Before it became big business and devolved into the spaced out elevator music we know and loathe today, this was the real thing.
From mathematical musical algorithms to airport murder mysteries to Henry Mancini and Bugs Bunny, the connections to mainstream culture run in curious directions. (Did you know, for instance, that a track from the first modern private press new age album is featured on the Blade Runner soundtrack? It’s called “Pompeii, 76 A.D.”, and we’ve got it here.)
I Am The Center is a knowing, but never cynical overview that invites listeners at last to the mainspring of a misunderstood genre’s greatest lights. Many of the biggest names are present — Iasos, inter-dimentional channeler of “paradise music”; Laraaji, discovered by Brian Eno playing for spare change in Washington Square Park; and the recently famous JD Emmanuel, icon to a new generation of drone, ambient, noise musicians. Call it what you will — before it was anything else, it was new age.
Lovingly conceived and lavishly presented, I Am The Center features stunning paintings by the legendary visual artist Gilbert Williams, and liner notes by producer Douglas Mcgowan, who weaves the words and images of the wizards and sorceresses of new age into a prismatic portrait of music that can finally be recognized for what it is: great American folk art.
-Light in the Attic