Customer Reviews

From the Dark Earth

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On "From The Dark Earth" Meg Bowles paints colorful and evocative ambient soundscapes which wonderfully compliment the beautiful and sensitively rendered trumpet playing of David Bilger. Bowles usually sets up each piece with a dark and brooding palette which sometimes moves effortlessly from sonic soup to austere beauty as in "The Forgotten Valley," with the addition of Cynthia Bilger on horn. These excursions into more melodic territory, with the trumpet leading the way, sometimes recall the melancholy mood set by oboe, cor anglais or cello in the neo-romantic ambient chamber music of Tim Story. Bowles music would certainly be in good company with the likes of recordings by Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns and Mychael Danna, amongst others. Fans of the ethno-ambient trumpet musings of Jon Hassell or Mark Isham's ambient trumpet recording "Tibet" may also want to give this recording a listen. Make no mistake though...this is a recording by a space music/ambient artist which features trumpet, not a trumpet recording attempting to explore that territory.

Meg Bowles always offers her listeners delicious excursions into the imaginal realms but with this new CD she blazes new territory. Her always brilliant handling of syth has been combined with electrifying trumpet, provided by David Bilger. This superb union delivers a gorgeous, swilrling listen into a brave new world.

Another work of superior quality. Bowles should receive more recognition from the Space/Ambient world. In my opinion, this work is a shade under her earlier release "Blue Cosmos". Her dark synthesizer work is complemented very well by Bilger's solo "ethereal" trumpet. An excellent step for Bowles, as I look forward to her next release. It would be very interesting to have her generate a work with other classical instruments in a supporting role. Both "Dark Earth" and "Blue Cosmos" are space-essentials.

This music is something special.Outstanding even.
It is probably Meg Bowles spaciest album out of the 3 available ones.
I totally disagree with some of the reviews here that criticize the trumpet.The acoustic tone merges very well with the myriad of electronic sounds and takes it to another level which makes this one so special.
It's the light that comes into the darkness.Very uplifting,hymnlike quality to the clarity with which this trumpet is played here.
One can definetly feel the strong influence of her mentor Constance Demby.
Her deepest and most mature album yet and only wishes for more of that kind.

Good news and bad news. The good. This is the best space music that I have heard. The bad news, then the trumpet comes in. Every song is completely ruined by the trumpet. It is completely in a different mood from the space music. One second you traveling through the cosmos and the next second you are in a lounge act. Mrs. Bowles needs to loose Mr. Bilger. He is a great trumpet player but not for space music. I wish that it were possible to get this album without the trumpet. It would be superior.

Mark Younger

I am newly introduced to ambient sounds and this is a treat. I find these sounds are thought provoking, relaxing and meditative. Will look for more of her music!

Many readers probably have had the experience of driving late at night, switching stations on the car stereo, and finding a station playing "Space Music," music that generally features swirling synthesizers underlain by pulsing electronic rhythms. Such music can have a welcome calming effect, especially after a long, stressful day, but the sameness of the synthesized sounds can prove deadly dull when listened to in the harsh light of day. What is intriguing about Meg Bowles's new recording, From the Dark Earth, is the integration of a trumpet part. What makes things even more intriguing is that the trumpeter is not some relatively unknown session player; instead, the trumpeter is none other than David Bilger. Now, that name might not be familiar to most readers, but to put his contribution to this recording in perspective, allow me to point out that Dave Bilger's "day job" is Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The end result of mixing Dave Bilger's trumpet (on some cuts joined by Cynthia Bilger's horn) with Meg Bowles's synthesizers is a recording that is fascinating both musically and sonically. This is Space Music with substance, music that you don't have to listen to late at night in the car to enjoy.

The recording was produced by Meg Bowles and her husband, Richard Price. Richard also engineered, edited, and mastered the recording. In response to some questions I had about how the recording was done, Richard was gracious enough to provide some fascinating insights into the recording process. What he had to say should be of interest to both audiophiles and music lovers, and he has given me kind permission to pass this along:

"This was a very interesting project to work on... as you probably know from Meg, I'm part of the team at Squires Productions, and we do about 90% classical work with a bit of acoustic folk and jazz thrown in, including the American remastering work for EMI Classics and new recordings for EMI and a number of other companies. So this was a change of pace! (Meg and I had done three CDs before, but never with live tracks mixed in with the synths.)

The big challenge in quality space music recording is to achieve the kind of silent background we in classical digital audio take for granted. Sound modules and synths were often engineered with more pop type applications in mind and can have alarmingly noisy habits. We use the quietest ones we can find, gate everything that's not playing, use judicious EQ and very minimal dynamics processing, and keep everything possible in the digital domain.

The cornerstone of this CD was really the great new WR DA7 digital mixer from Panasonic/Ramsa. It enabled us to keep everything possible in the digital domain, including lots of the synth patches. Meg uses a number of synth modules, but her principal keyboard is a Kurzweil 2500, which has direct digital out capabilities via the Kurzweil DMti interface (enhanced by the KDFX package, which along with its goodies eliminates what used to be an extra round of ADDA conversion before the digital outputs of the 2500). We were able to take eight channels of digital audio directly from the K2500 into the Ramsa.

Processing was done with five outboard Lexicons--a 300, two PCM 90s, a PCM 80, and an LXP5. Two of these were used totally in the digital domain the Ramsa has one fully digital aux bus, unlike most of the digital mixers which have none (doesn't make sense to me!), and we interposed one between the output of our sound card (Lucid pci24) and the Ramsa digital ins, for exclusive use by the trumpet (all in the digital domain).

Sequencing and most of the mixing was done in Opcode Studio Vision Pro. We recorded Dave in the chapel of Concordia College in Bronxville, NY, an excellent venue for live brass, using two Neumann TLM170 large diaphragm condenser mics, a custom board and a custom A/D, both built by Bill Batey at Critical Sound, and I edited the trumpet and horn parts at Squires Productions on one of our Studer Dyaxis II editing systems. (With Dave's playing, the editing was minimal--Dave is absolutely the greatest.) We then transferred the edited trumpet and horn tracks (which never left the digital domain) into Studio Vision via the Lucid pci24, and Meg did the vast majority of the mixing within that program. (The Ramsa is automated, which was nice too!)

The main mixing challenge was to get the trumpet believably in the same soundscape with the synths, without losing the beauty of Dave's natural sound. Toward this end, Meg designed and tweaked a number of special reverb settings on the Lexicon dedicated to Dave (we called it the "Dave o con"). She has great ears, as well as a strong classical background, and when she designed a reverb she liked I invariably liked it too.

For the sessions, Dave had a headphone feed which included both the synth mixes and a click track; the click was bussed separately so that we could give Dave more music without raising the level of the click and risking leakage from his headphones. Gregg Squires, at Squires Productions, cooked us up some custom cables to enable us to do this, and indeed was a huge help throughout the project. A lot of stuff had to be mapped out that we don't ordinarily deal with!

Final mastering was done at Squires, again on the Dyaxis II. Our near field monitors were Paradigms (their Mini Mark 3s, which are terrific little nearfields), and our main mastering monitors were the large B&Ws that we use for our classical mastering work. We also did some reference work on a pair of Electro Voice Sentry Vs and a smaller pair of B&Ws. Overall, there was more time spent on the nearfields than would be typical of a classical project, as we were kind of creating a new imaginary soundscape; the Paradigms have a great soundstage image. Other equipment included Hafler power amps and Sony MDR V6 headphones.

All in all, we've tried to keep this project at the very highest audio level. I'm an acoustic, classical guy, and that's how we went about this project. We're very pleased with the result, and I hope it allows listeners to really enjoy what Meg and Dave did."

After reading a few reviews from other Amazon customers I ventured into buying this record. Let me first say that I love the sound of the trumpet and the synthesizer together. I am a big fan of Mark Isham, Chris Botti and Colin Chin. All these artists have successfully combined the sound of both instruments. Mainly because of their background (jazz) they have created beautiful melodies in the synthesizer which enable the trumpet solos to fit very well. Meg Bowles doesn't bring this to the mix. Space music, which is her forte, dosen't mix that well with the trumpet. Space music in itself lacks melodies. Usually is drones and washes of sounds. By the time the trumpet kicks in you are ready to press the forward button on your CD player. David Bilger is excellent on his solos, however Meg Bowles is not up to par. Skip this one and go directly to Chris Botti - Midnight Without You or Mark Isham - Film Music.