Lotus Land
Gandalf
Real Music
review by Jerry Rabushka
Very little is cooler & more exciting, new-age-musically speaking, than opening a pack of promo CDs and finding a new release from Gandalf, the Austrian musician who took his “stage name” from Mr. Wizard of Lord of the Rings. He’s the cut-above in the new age world, “new classical” is what he’s been called by some, where you can actually listen to the music, or just have it roll over you in the background.
Lotus Land is in ways much like his earlier releases, but much different, in that you’re not going “oh it’s the same damn thing!” You can play it over and over, the same smooth rolling guitars, keys, English horn; a bit more sitar this time, melodies reprising when you don’t expect it, just very nice driving-in-the-dark or I-have-that-special-someone kind of music. Could be the orchestration, the fact that he uses a variety of instruments, it’s well thought out what plays where, it’s all lush and peaceful and does what it’s supposed to do.
I like “Life is Love,” which takes a sitar into a more western sonic landscape; that same simple melody comes back later in the CD, a bit more subtly. This Sitar comes back in "Just a Glimpse of Paradise," which almost gives you just a glimpse of the tune from "Life if Love." The start of Mystic Voyage has a great sounding "synth pad over bells" going, then in comes the piano; it's how he handles the simplest of chords that makes much of this so nice.
Remember the land of the lotus eaters from the Odyssey? If you ate the lotus, you were really really happy and wouldn’t care about your wife, kids, or the rest of your life. This won’t quite do that, but it’ll “take you away” in a very nice way. Very pretty stuff.
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