inSPAration and iRelax Anywhere
Various Artists
Real Music
review by Jerry Rabushka
It’s relatively hard to go wrong with a Real Music CD, if you’re after something relaxing. They specialize in it, and there have only been a couple of their releases when I’ve gone “hummph.” They make a lot of hay on compilation albums, where they’ll take selections from several CDs released on their own and perhaps other labels and combine them into one calming whole.
A couple recent endeavors are inSPAration, which they bill as “the very best collection ever from the world’s leading provider of spa music,” (I didn’t realize spa music was a genre, but ok I’m down with it.) and iRelax Anywhere, billed as music you can play at work and calm down from a really stressful meeting, or a bad lunch date with the boss’s wife. You know, the one where she threatens to tell that it’s not really lunch.
You’ve got to realize spell check is going crazy with these album titles.
Anywhere takes you a lot of places, along with the usual flutes and harps and guitars, there’s side trips to Ireland and the Orient. A quiet Celtic 3/8 or a clear Asian flute not only calms you down but gives you a mini vacation as you can contemplate rolling hills of Ireland or a peaceful Japanese Garden.
“Even Now” by the group 2002 makes yet another appearance on Anywhere (I’ve heard it on at least one of their earlier compilations) but its gentle synth chords and comforting guitar tune is really nice and you just can’t say no. “Bells of Himalayas,” by Frank Steiner Jr. has a lot of chiming and ringing (in a good way, it doesn't really have a melody so much as a sound), and Anywhere ends with a “Forever and a Day,” by harpist Hilary Stagg from 1988.
Many of the same artists appear on both these CDs, so if you can’t decide, get them both, and turn your office into a spa!
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