Still Life - Volume One

Nelson Foltz | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 3, 2006)
• Original Release Date: January 21, 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Stillsounds.com
• ASIN: B000EGFVO0
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,587 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, March 27, 2006

By 

Musician - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Life - Volume One (Audio CD)

Too many years ago I went through something few working Americans ever get a chance to experience - a three-week vacation. Bear with me for a minute. Workaholic that I am, I spent the first week bolting awake at 7 a.m., rushing through my shower, inhaling my breakfast, fidgeting on the beach, checking voicemail, making to-do lists. But by the end of the second week, something funny happened. Staring out to sea, I noticed a couple of kids trying to body surf. They swam out, frantically tried to catch a wave, missed it, swam back out, missed it, again and again, the same pattern - swim, miss, swim, miss. This went on for quite a while, until quite unexpectedly, one of the kids did catch a wave. It lifted him up and carried him forward and gently settled him onto the beach at my feet. And I laughed. For the third week of my vacation, I slept in, took two-hours at breakfast, swam in the ocean.

What I'm getting at is a rather subtle, but potent issue about time, and how we spend it. The majority of the music we listen to is like fast food - extremes of dynamics, texture, sound, text - all crammed into three minutes. Television, work, movies, phone calls, shopping - it's all the same bit. What's so very different, and good, about these Still Life recordings is that they take their time. Aside from feeling remarkably calm and relaxed after listening to the first disc, I found myself wondering at the amount of time I had wasted in front of the television or aimlessly shopping online for nothing. The value is in the very act of allowing yourself to sit down and wait for the music to unfold, very slowly, very carefully - not the first three minutes, but the entire disc. These pieces are full of wonderful surprises, all of them completely natural in sound, but the kind of surprises that you have to first relax and wait for to let happen.

Highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flying with music, February 16, 2006

By 

michael p "michael" (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Life - Volume One (Audio CD)

This record caused physical change in my body. When I hit play, I was feeling a little tense that day- my shoulders were all bunchy, my neck was tight. The CD began with the opening strains of a far off drone growing from nothing, so slowly and naturally and beautifully, so meditatively, I didn't even realize that by the time I was 20 minutes into it, i was somewhere else. I was flying in my own body, soaring over icelandic fields, my body coming to rest, I was breathing from a deep place. It so very very rarely happens that music had this effect on me. By the time the first track faded so organically slowly into the music of birds singing on a spring morning and childern laughing and singing in the distance, I found myself calm and still and centered. This is music.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, someone gets it right., February 11, 2006

By 

Bill V (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Life - Volume One (Audio CD)

"As a licensed acupuncturist and also a musician, I've always found it
difficult to find music that stands up well to repeated listening in my
sessions with patients and something that I will also enjoy even after
having heard it numerous times. It's usually either too short,
too jarring and/or intrusive or just too cheesy.
Most other CDs like this get some of right, but I find myself skipping through tracks.
These guys get it right for the entire cd and the series as a whole.
Finding the Still Life Series has been great.
The music sets the perfect mood and the patients find themselves completely relaxed as the music gently moves along.
A number of people talk about experiencing a feeling of
transcendence and floating during their treatments. I highly recommend
Volume One or any of the Still Life cds to anyone who wants to relax
and let their mind wander in a very beautiful place."
NYC licensed acupuncturist