Ambient Music Pioneer Meg Bowles Is Back With Wondrous New Album

Lillian

New member
Where has Meg Bowles been? It has been quite a few years since she released her last album, The Shimmering Land, which was played a lot on new age radio and went to the top of the annual airplay chart for this type of soft, gentle music (compiled by the website called Zone Music Reporter). But she finally has a new album released, Evensong Canticles for the Earth, which proves the old adage that the wait is often worth it. This new music is just excellent and is highly recommended for anyone who loves good ambient and new age music. It is soothing and relaxing, yes, but also good fodder for the mind. There are enough things happening in the music to keep it interesting for listeners who still actually sit down and listen to music.

Bowles has been a top ambient music creator for at least three decades or so. I count that this is her seventh album so she does not put them out very often, so when she does it is cause for celebration.

The album has seven tunes ranging in length from “Time and Light” at fifteen-minutes to the soft-and-slow “Chalice of Shadows” which clocks in at under six-minutes. Whenever I see the word “chalice” I cannot help but think of that Indiana Jones movie where they are searching for the chalice that Jesus and his disciples drank out of. This music could have been used in the scene when they found the chalice. The most space-music sounding track is the next one, appropriately-titled “Berceuse for a Star Child,” which also is soft and slow and has more film-score qualities, maybe for a Star Wars Jedi quiet moment or that ultimate Kubrick womb-like-baby-in-the-stars moment from the ground-breaking “2001” movie. Beyond the soundtrack qualities, the music has all kinds of cool things happening in it. I especially like the “bong-boop-drip-drop-dop” rhythmic sounds in “Time and Light.”

On this album, the inspiration behind the music is sort of the earth’s place in the universe, and the wondrousness of it all. Bowles merges her love for nature into a spiritually-based musical tribute. Sort of a “thank you for everything -- us, our world, the universe” sort of instrumental message. Regardless of where it came from, thank you Meg Bowles for this great new music.
 
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