At the Edge (Reis)

The World (Rykodisc/Mickey Hart Series), Mickey Hart | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 15, 2008)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Shout Factory
• ASIN: B0015I2O6Y
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,963 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. #4 for Gaia

2. Sky Water

3. Slow Sailing

4. Lonesome Hero

5. Fast Sailing

6. Cougar Run

7. The Eliminators

8. Brainstorm

9. Pigs in Space

Editorial Reviews

Mickey Hart's personal odyssey into the spirit of percussion. As producer of The World, he showcases some of the most dynamic, yet sublime music of our planet. On AT THE EDGE he combines these ancient techniques and instruments with the most modern of recording technology to explore the outer limits of drumming. The companion piece to his first book, this album is a chronicle of Hart's search for the rhythmic beginnings of music, for the primal pulse that has beaten under every human activity -- all celebrations, rites of passage, wars, shamanic rituals -- in every culture since time immemorial. Exploring the primeval instrumentation of man's earliest sonic expression, the "instruments that have made it through time," Hart tuned the percussive rudiments of whistles and gourd rattles, wooden rainsticks and slit gongs, panpipes and bells, using state-of-the-art spatial reverberation and electronic processing. Acoustic natural sounds (wind, thunder, rain, insects, recorded with close-microphone technique outside his mountain home) were mixed, enabling Hart to create the environment for "an ancient future, allowing us to go back in time, recreating a more silent space." It is a journey to the Edge, "between the old and the new...rhythm and noise, just as much as between imagination and reality, nature and music, or creation and destruction." An exquisitely peaceful soundscape evolves from a world before the presence of man ("#4 for Gaia") through quickening rhythms of human activity to the final sonorous swirl of chanting voices ("Pigs in Space") in a silence devoid of nature, a silence of Man at the Edge he has reached. Where, for our world to survive, we must change rhythms. And dance.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Precursor To Planet Drum...., August 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: At the Edge (Audio CD)

This CD goes well with the following CD Planet Drum.

This is Mickey's CD companion to the superb book "Drumming At the Edge..."

I just love how the CD starts off with the quietness of the "Forest" noises, going from track to track adding a little more percussive instruments building up to track 5 where Mickey & Co start to really cook. It is almost like you are starting at the beginning of time up to the present.

Great stuff to set your mind to!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Little Ears, May 22, 2008

By 

Janel O'brien (Westchester, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At the Edge (Audio CD)

My husband is a Mickey Hart fan, so we had the CD. It turns out to be our six month old son's favorite music to listen to at night to sleep. I'm now getting it for my nephew who is one!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half an Album, February 8, 2010

By 

T. Teater - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: At the Edge (Reis) (Audio CD)

The first half of this album was in a word, boring. Miscellaneous animal noises, a few beep and booms very forgettable. By about track four or five it started to get some interest, more like what I have come to enjoy about Mickey Hart. Over all I found it to be disappointing, not one of his better efforts.