Customer Reviews

Songs of Earth & Sky

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
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Soothing blend of insturmental and vocal harmonies. Half choral and half instrumental pieces. Listen to Feast and My love is like a red red rose for a good example of the album as a whole. Not one bad song on the entire cd! My favorite Bill Douglas album. Well worth your time and money!

Putting Old English poetry to music sounds like a recipe for a ho-hum CD, but it works beautifully-- the words and music complement each other in an equisite musical feast. Listen to the exerpt from "The Cloud" to get a taste.

My wife and I had the tv tuned to the "New Age" station on the satellite a few months ago while working around the house, and I just heard a bar or two of "Clouds," #2 on this cd, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. It felt like a feather was tickling my soul from a place so far away, and I knew it immediately as a new enchantment and love affair. I resisted for a good month, but every once in a great while I'd hear a part of another song, such as "Wind of the Western Sea," #8 on this same cd, and it had the same powerful but incredibly delicate effect. This is music that takes you apart and puts you back together again, as all great art should, in a better way than you were before. I'm just fascinated with how it all begins, like a master safecracker finally hearing the last tumbler fall out. So far away and yet so close, the "weak force" in physics that holds it all together.

The poems are all classics by the great poets of old -- Shakespeare, Keats, Blake, Burns, Yeats, Dickinson -- and they are sung so clearly, with such moving musical interludes and accompaniment. I'm not a critic and so don't have too many words to describe the beauty here. I also bought Douglas' Deep Peace cd at the same time and it's the same format, poems sung by the Ars Nova Singers to Douglas' musical arrangements. I love both of them.

This is my first encounter hearing Bill Douglas. The song The Cloud is especially moving, haunting, and relaxing at the same time. It is especially fitting when i sit outside in the evening the moon and the stars gracing the desert sky and suddenly as i listen to The Cloud, one gently drifts by, acknowledging this beautiful song.

As always with Bill Douglas, these selections are beautifully orchestrated. We enjoy the choral segements intertwined with the instrumental pieces. We play them in the evenings while we read. Friends always comment on how wonderful they are

If you are seeking music that will sweep you away this is it! If you are looking to slip into a relaxed state while listening to joyous sound, this is it.
Bill Douglas uses great instrumentals and, in some selections, a chorale of heavenly voices to capture our hearts and souls. What's more, the vocals are soft distant and wondrous. Bill takes poetry, (think Byron, Keats) and puts it to music. It is MAGICAL!
I don't usually like vocals mixed into an instrumental CD, but this is my favorite CD when I am on a flight, coming home from a business trip. It washes my stress away.
Try it, you will be MOST PLEASED!

Bill is great. Also check out my favorite relaxing artist, Genie. My fave is WHISPER.