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review by Dene Bebbington Renowned new age composer Llewellyn has changed tack from recent Celtic inspired albums to create a work designed to facilitate dreaming for the unconscious mind, and to take one through "the astral realms of the dreamstate". In my opinion Llewellyn is one of the best composers in the new age genre, so I believe the album should appeal to those just wanting to hear nice relaxing music, but especially to people interested in the dreaming stuff - which is explained in the liner notes. After having heard Llewellyn's Sacred Circles and Mysts of Avalon albums I was surprised to find that on Journey to Our Dreams he's gone for long form pieces that are rather ambient in sound and structure. It does, however, retain new age elements of relatively undemanding and sweet sonic textures. It's nice to see some new age artists taking a slightly different musical path now and again, I was also pleased when fellow traveller Kevin Kendle started to explore spacemusic realms with his Deep Skies series. The album is divided into four parts, each part consisting of one track in the range of ten to just over fourteen minutes long. The first track "Breathing" is designed to get one's body to relax, to achieve this sunny glissando rays of sound with a vague hint of choral voices slice across the soundscape while synth washes and occasional sparse piano notes all come together to produce a pleasant and soothing aural experience. This musical style is repeated with modest differences on subsequent tracks, so that the overall effect on this listener was to feel like I've been reassuringly carried on a calm sea of sound through enjoyable dreamlands. As usual when it comes to this kind of music I wasn't particularly interested in the new age purposes behind it. My perspective on Journey to Our Dreams is that of an ordinary listener who has an emotional reaction to music, and from that point of view I think it works well. It would undoubtedly be an ideal companion any time you want to ease down from the stresses of life, or when some pleasing background music is wanted. |
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