Edge of Heaven [Import]

Gary Lucas | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 14, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Label Bleu Records
• ASIN: B00005Q4KO
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,261 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Old Dreams

2. Please Allow Me to Look at You Again

3. The Mad World

4. The Wall

5. If I'm without You

6. Night in Shanghai

7. Where is My Home

8. Songstress on the Edge of Heaven

9. I Wait for Your Return

10. Pretense

11. The Moon in the Street

12. The Wall (Instrumental Version)

13. Please Allow Me to Look at You Again (Instrumental Version)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Western Hands, Eastern Voices, February 3, 2003

By 

Christopher Dee (Chappaqua, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Edge of Heaven (Audio CD)

If you listen to music almost constantly as I do, you come across something like this every five years or so: something that has the combination of virtuosity, strangeness, passion, intelligence and delicacy that makes a work of art not just beautiful, but beautiful in a new way.

What kind of music is it? I hope that I can describe it in a way that doesn't make it sound like a stunt, or some kind of insipid musical tourism, which it absolutely is not. This is a guitar record, with voice on almost half of the tracks, and a drummer and bassist in the background on four. The songs are Lucas's arrangements for fingerstyle guitar (electric, acoustic, National Steel) of Chinese pop ballads of the mid-20th century. Seven of the tracks are instrumental; the other six feature a female vocalist: in three cases Celest Chong, in the other three Gisbourg. The vocals are in Chinese. Are you still with me? Please, please give this music a chance. Some of the arrangements are, I imagine, close to the flavor of the original recordings (which I have not heard); some are given more of a blues inflection (even electric slide on one), and sound more familiar.

If you know Gary Lucas you will not be surprised by the jaw-dropping strength and dexterity of his playing here but you may not be prepared for how achingly beautiful and "inside" it is. If you are really familiar with his work you may have heard instrumental versions of this music on two earlier albums: "The Wall" and "Songstress on the Edge of Heaven" on Evangeline and a live version of the latter song on @Paradiso. Those performances are highlights of their respective albums, but this CD makes them seem like rehearsals, which is what they turn out to have been. This is not "blues guitar meets China" or any other kind of stupid musical hybrid. This is about the deep level at which the emotionality of Eastern and Western music is the same, an idea which surprises on first hearing but which should really surprise no one, and about the melting away of that surprise to reveal the calm core of beauty inside it. I love this record, and you won't be sorry if you go a little out of your way to hear it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky Melodies plus Ethereal Beauty, August 25, 2005

By 

J. K. Townsend (Nashville TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Edge of Heaven (Audio CD)

I have travelled to China several times, regularly read Chinese poetry and literature, and love Chinese music of all genres. These are Chinese songs, make no mistake, originally recorded by chanteuses who performed in the 1930s to 1940s. The records made by these Shanghai Divas are exquisite in their own right. Gary Lucas has transformed these quirky, gorgeous melodies into a set of solo guitar (sometimes double or triple tracked) works that stand on their own for their inventiveness and masterly arrangements. Occasionally two superb female vocalists -- singing in Mandarin -- will share the spotlight with a drummer and bassist. There is variety, quirkiness, the familiar along with the strange, a recording where time passes quickly leaving the listener wanting more. Anyone interested in hearing the original singers with their big band arrangements should check out the reissued and remastered "Shanghai Divas" set, available through Amazon.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DON'T BOTHER KNOCKING -- HEAVEN'S DOOR IS ALREADY OPEN, July 25, 2011

By 

Glenn Harcourt - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Edge Of Heaven (Audio CD)

Opened a whole new (and transcendental) world for me -- as I expect it will for most everybody who has not heard this magic performed live: lucky them. Mining a repertoire of material that might at first seem resolutely unlikely, at best, Gary and his two singers (Celeste Chong and Ginsburg)have reclaimed the music of the legendary Shanghai chanteuses Bai Kwon and Chow Hsun, while at the same time transfiguring the idiom of Shanghai 30s-50s "pop" in a way that really does allow us to stand on the edge of the Middle Kingdom's heaven. As always, Gary's playing is protean in its complexity, perfect in its simplicity; and the two singers transport us with a crystal clarity, a crispness of intonation and forceful aithenticity that I found impossible to resist. AN ABSOLUTE TREAT -- DON'T MISS IT!