May 2005 CDs
Imagine Peace
Imagine Peace is a welcome antidote to the grim news of the day. This stunning album features the ethereal yet powerful vocals of Singh Kaur (Lorellei) performing alongside Dean Evenson and members of the Soundings Ensemble.
Music reviewer PJ Birosik calls Singh Kaur “one of the great vocalists of our time.” From the first notes of her exquisite rendition of John Lennon's Imagine to the memorable strains of the well-known prayer of St. Francis, the music engages and inspires the listener to imagine a better world.
First released in the late ‘80s as Instruments of Peace , the album soon climbed to the top of the Billboard charts. The deeply personal yet universal songs carry a message of love and hope and are performed with the quality of musicianship that has made Soundings of the Planet a top new age label for the past 25 years.
The album contains new material and has been re-mastered and re-mixed from the original. It includes a special CD ROM bonus video of the Soundings Story and the Peace Through Music mission with previously unreleased video of Singh Kaur.
If you like Enya, Loreena McKinnett and even Sinead O'Connor, you will love the crystal clear yet powerful vocals of Singh Kaur. The energetic music of the Soundings Ensemble weaves a seamless flow alternating between vocal songs and instrumentals. It is guaranteed to lift your spirits.
French Kiss
Ready for a hip, ultra-Now Parisian getaway? French Kiss is a treat of sultry light French vocals mingled with seductive late-night beats, a banquet of chic selections from some of today's freshest talent. Ah, c'est si bon.
Chill out in Paris with this stylishly cool, irresistibly sexy and tantalizing electronica. You may not understand the words, but you'll get the message. And you'll love it.
The instrumentals are as amazing as the vocals, and the vocals are stupendously smooth, liquid, rhapsodic. Tasteful beats, sexy moods. An adventure in bossa nova gives way to mystery shrouded in café downtempo, and there you are, ensconced at a little café on the rive gauche , lost in a glass of fine wine.
Listen to this one with someone you share chemistry with. Sigh, cry, kiss and die—your own petite mort of blissful surrender.
—Chiwah
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Sacred Stage
Navajo rock! In the original. Dine singer/songwriter James Bilagody joins sounds with The Cremains, a hard rock band anchored by their Native identity, in Sacred Stage , giving us a never before heard fusion of rock and original songs evoking the ancient ways of the Dine people.
Sacred Stage is an interesting experiment in the juxtaposition of sensitive Native lyrics against a backdrop of hard-driving rock. But unless you speak Dine, you would never suspect the sensitive nature of the lyrics—until you opened the album sleeve and read the translations of a few cuts.
Here, for example, are the words given as translations of the sixth cut, “Sandstone”: “There you are sitting, beautiful, on sandstone. You stand with me here always. Thoughts of you go with me everywhere. Here you come again… with me all the time. There you are saying good-bye. We may never be together but our minds and hearts will be as one.”
My personal opinion is that sometimes the justaposition of words and yang rock rhythms works, and sometimes it doesn't. But always, the energy is contagious. I see this album as a classic in the evolution of Native rock. —Chiwah
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