Shadowfax - Shadowdance
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Free Music Notes for Shadowdance
Free Music Review: An excellent album
Hit: 5 Stars
Everything about this CD works. Shadowdance is an intriguing piece of work, New Electric India rocks. A Song For My Brother is heart rending. There is not one song on this album which can be classified as sub-par. In fact, they are all excellent. The work is creative without being wierd.Free Music Review: Shadowfax -- this time for real
Hit: 4 Stars
The music biz is a tough boat to sail. After failing to win the masses with their debut, the band resumed by assembling a decent but overly cautious acoustic album for Windham Hill. Then, when the band went out on tour, they rediscovered electricity. How were they going to reconcile their progressive inclinations with their new acoustic-oriented label?
We can only imagine the conversations that must have occurred, but some kind of go-ahead evidently came out of it, resulting in a genuinely new sound. Starting with the road-tested "New Electric India" and Don Cherry's "Brown Rice", the band found a new direction right out of the Star Wars cantina in "Shadowdance" -- Greenberg's spritely lyricon coaxed by the chthonic percussion to come out of the hobbit-hole and dance. Add in a couple gentle pieces plus two repainted beauties from their pre-Windham Hill days and Voila! -- the most diverse-yet-compatible album they had yet made, and the harbinger of their larger successes to come.
THE DREAMS OF CHILDREN and TOO FAR TO WHISPER would boldly capitalize on the strengths found here. And the results may sometimes be argued to be better, depending on the listener's preferences; certainly the band came to show more confidence in their world-music-meets-adult-rock format. But here we see the first shiver of discovery, advancing or holding ground in several fronts at once.
It was strange, yet familiar; it was relaxed but energetic; it was electric while rooted in the acoustics of world percussion. Real Shadowfax begins here.
Free Music Review: New Age in its best sense
Hit: 4 Stars
Wow, I'm surprised there are so few Shadowfax reviews on Amazon ... I know there are a lot of fans out there.Let me say at the outset that I don't qualify as a Shadowfax fan: never saw them live, don't have most of their albums. (I think I have cassettes of _Watercourse Way_ and _The Dreams of Children_ or something else somewhere, but they never got much play in my house.) I'm also not a big fan of New Age music, much of which is just too limp to interest me. I have a Tingstad & Rumbel album or two, I like certain acoustic guitarists like Doug Smith and Paul Chasman, used to listen a bit to Kitaro and Jean-Michel Jarre, but that's about the extent of it.
I've seen folks elsewhere on the Internet declare that Shadowfax's best work was done before this album, but I happened to encounter this one and it hit me just right.
This is New Age music with a beat. "New Electric India" rocks, while "Brown Rice" bops along with a sly grin on its face. On the other hand, "A Song For my Brother" aches, and "Ghost Bird" is suitably haunting. A good mixture of moods, and fine musicianship. Wish I'd gotten the chance to see the band live at some point.
Free Music Review: New Age in its best sense
Hit: 4 Stars
Wow, I'm surprised there are so few Shadowfax reviews on Amazon ... I know there are a lot of fans out there.Let me say at the outset that I don't qualify as a Shadowfax fan: never saw them live, don't have most of their albums. (I think I have cassettes of _Watercourse Way_ and _The Dreams of Children_ or something else somewhere, but they never got much play in my house.) I'm also not a big fan of New Age music, much of which is just too limp to interest me. I have a Tingstad & Rumbel album or two, like certain acoustic guitarists like Doug Smith and Paul Chasman, used to listen a bit to Kitaro and Jean-Michel Jarre, but that's about the extent of it.
I've seen folks elsewhere on the Internet declare that Shadowfax's best work was done before this album, but I happened to encounter this one and it hit me just right.
This is New Age music with a beat. "New Electric India" rocks, while "Brown Rice" bops along with a sly grin on its face. On the other hand, "A Song For my Brother" aches, and "Ghost Bird" is suitably haunting. A good mixture of moods, and fine musicianship. Wish I'd gotten the chance to see the band live at some point.
Free Music Review: A long time ago...
Hit: 4 Stars
Shadowfax were the pioneers of New Age music. In 1983 they released this album which I come to think it was one of the first compact discs to be issued.
It's more than 20 years they did this marvellous album. An album which is the peak of this group and was reference to many artists who liked to explore in new ways of making music.
Shadowfax was the first new age group, as soloists were mostly common like Ackermann, Winston, and all the people at Windham Hill (oh, what would have been music without this label?). They were even more remembered a few years after the releasing of their first recordings as their style was becoming too eclectic.
Nowadays, it is very pleasant to listen to Shadowdance, but it has been losing some charm. It sounds a little bit old, but it has freshness. It sounds a little bit naïve, but it has strength. It's a recording to take in mind and to discover. But you can feel somewhat disappointed if you don't put it into the time it was made.