Customer Reviews

Grooved Whale

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I fully respect the right of the previous reviewer to mark down Lisa's gorgeous album, but I'm not sure how he sourced his information about the mixing on this fabulous soundscape. I have owned the album for several years now and it continues to be one of my favorite ambient backgrounds. I play it several times during the week. It's a very creative and delightful composition, a mix of whalesong, violin, ocean tides and other captured impulses. Very organic. It instills a kind of peaceful, calm energy that carries me into the busiest parts of my day with confidence.

Of course, I love whales and the great oceans of our blue planet with a passion. My ideal vacation is spent diving under the waves to behold the splendid other-ness of that world.

The album begins with Lisa's violin call to the whales and that opening seems jarring to most humans. It only lasts a matter of seconds and you can easily skip it on your CD. My (formerly feral)cat, however, loves every second of the album and leads me to the CD player daily to request her "fishy music". Once she hears it begin, she will finally relax into unguarded dreaming for the duration.

Give it a listen. If you are a water baby like me, no doubt you will fall in love all over again.

Lisa's play within the liquid realm, her listening to the music held therein, 'listening to something "other" yet something so familiar', has brought forth sounds elegantly woven together that deeply nurture. Ancient music singing forth.

Violinist Lisa Walker at first set out to study whale vocalizations in Alaskan waters, but soon came to value their enigmatic songs more for their artistic content than for any detached scientific interest. Combining underwater hydrophone recordings with her own new-agey violin + synthesizer tunes, she has crafted an "interspecies ambient" album (her term) which unfortunately emphasizes mystery over understanding.

It seems like a missed opportunity to me that her music does not attempt to incorporate whalesong except as occasional backdrop. She also mentions on her website (groovedwhale.com) that she played her violin to the whales through underwater speakers and it would have been nice to know whether the humpbacks responded to this in any way.

Alas, "communication" does not seem to have been the goal and it certainly did not emerge as a result. What we have is a rather lackluster new age album with some whale recordings in the background.