Healing Waters [CD]
by Dean Evenson
With gentle water sounds washing over all, New Age producer-musician Dean Evenson presents another captivating album from his own homespun Soundings of the Planet label. Healing Waters includes the patient, cascading harp-playing of his wife, Dudley Evenson, his own soulfully minimalist flute, and a nicely understated use of bass synthesizer, which snakes under the music's generally placid surface. Each track flows through the mind's eye like a soft downriver journey, with tones and vibrations quietly working to erode and wash away care and concern, inviting a state of calm, waterside repose. Close your eyes, put a little mist in the air, and let the river of aural prana fill and replenish your soul's dry spots.
Tracks are constructed like those masterful gardens that seem to form naturally with the landscape, as if there was no one designing and tending them. From the ambient water sounds come gentle fountain flutes and soft, relaxing webs of harp, as on the funnily named "Water You Talking About," which uses overlapping echo and delay on the flutes and harps until your dizzy with relaxation. Dean employs a contemplative Zen approach with "Swirling Beyond Belief," playing long, drawn-out flute notes that slowly overlap over a background of calling birds and low, rumbling synth chords. In keeping with the "in the moment" feeling that pervades throughout Healing Waters, the music never strays too far from the root, though there are nice exceptions such as "Ripples in the Wind." Here Dean's flute strikes out toward an inspiring melody, soaring higher and higher over a landscape of slowly cycling bass and harp figures.
Overall "Healing Waters" stays focused on the "one," on the breath of life, the regular pulse that roots us to the source in meditation. "Stream of Blessing" is one such track, with its warm drone roots and fluttery shafts of light flute, and violin and guitar passages circling down like falling leaves. Perfect as the background for a holistic healing session, home meditation, or just falling asleep, Healing Waters is most effective in its composer's gentle willingness to step back and let the water have the spotlight. The instruments around it flow, eddy, and recede on beautiful currents until every last toxin in your mind is washed downstream.
Weight: 0.3300 pounds
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Gift Of The Week 12-5-2008