Customer Reviews

From Pale Hands to Weary Skies

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From Pale Hands To Weary Skies, Darshan Ambient's third Lotuspike release, is a powerful and uplifting ambient electronic work inspired by abstract art, and enhanced by life-changing experiences.

Michael Allison, the creative force behind Darshan Ambient, found the inspiration for the album's original concept in the art of French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, and like the painter's images, Allison's compositions conjure abstract landscapes, skillfully depicted with a tight sonic palette. However, the album delivers more than just a musical interpretation of Tanguy's alien landscapes and abstract shapes. For Michael Allison, an artist that consistently delivers excellence, this release is clearly coming from a deeper and more meaningful place. During the beginning phases of its creation, Michael became deathly ill and landed in the Intensive Care Unit, comatose for six days. After his release from the hospital, Michael began a slow rehabilitation process which included moments of intense inspiration.

Says Allison, "It was as though the floodgates had been blown wide open and the music became incredibly easy to write. Track after track, song after song, the album just came together as though it were writing itself."

With musical contributions from Daevine's Jourdan Laik and Jon Short of The Deep Sky Divers, From Pale Hands To Weary Skies communicates and delivers on many levels, and is certainly Darshan Ambient's most moving and inspirational release to date.

Gliding through rythmic beat, weaving trembling memories, soaring waves of pulsing softly, fast at times, very slow at times

Strange even unsettling at times, the piano maintains a familiar space where the listener can ground themselves. A dancing spirit set free at once, this work gives your biological system a spiritual massage...

Sadness, dearness, happiness... all the same. A brilliant combination of piano, electronic melody and percussion.

This album is as beautiful as it is basic. It seems to be perfect for any time or any place, yet it always conveys the comfort of home. Michael Allison begins each track with a warm synth, builds up a dry beat (on two thirds of the songs), and then picks a keyboard setting somewhere between piano and bell. Everything about this music is subtle, yet it never seems boring. Hard to define why it's my top play on last.FM this month, but he truly is a master in his field, with seven LPs since 1999.

Just a little idea: Tracks 1,2 & 7 have an eastern "new age" flavor. 3,6,8 & 11 have no beat. 4 & 9 are especially lush. 5 is pretty cool and dubby, and 10 is the title track!

This cd by Michael Allison, aka Darshan Ambient, is a positive, uplifting work of both rhythmic and free form textural ambient, initially inspired by the art of surrealist painter Yves Tanguy. But while working on the music, life came in the way: Michael became deadly ill, and after a slow but steady recovery he used the power and strength from this life-changing experience to sculpture and polish the smooth, sonic outcome, with occasional melancholic undercurrents.

The 11 excellently produced and mixed tracks glisten of emotion and honesty, featuring lots of detail, expansive textural pads, piano and rhythmic structures. Its warmth and overall dreamy sound sometimes remind of Patrick O'Hearn, but most of all follows its own straightforward path with original sidesteps. Within all this, the upbeat and complex "Multiplication of the Arcs" stands nicely next to the soundscape dwellings of "Suffering Softens Stones", a track co-composed with Jon Short (one half of the British UK-duo Deep Sky Divers).

"From Pale Hands to Weary Skies" is a moving and mature piece of ambient art bringing a variety of emotions to the surface.

Highly recommended.