Search - Various Artists :: Windham Hill Sampler 1

The Roots of the Genre

tarsus@sjm.infi.net | Walnut Creek, CA | 09/28/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Long before the industry forced the very marketable term "New Age" on this direction of music, "Windhammil Hill" was creating it in pure form. There are no synthesizers on this sampler CD, no philosophical advocations, no pretty faces on the cover, just uncomproming aural beauty. Most of what is called New Age music today finds its roots here - give it SIX stars if only for that"

One of the best tasters of this sort of attractive music

tarsus@sjm.infi.net | 09/01/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For those who aren't too taken with the New Age idiom and its excesses, this collection offers extremely tasteful and restrained compositions and performances, which nonetheless intimate the stirrings of the soul in the face of nature which are supposed to be the genre's forte. The featured artists, such as Robbie Basho and Alex de Grassi, have well-earned credibility in folk and instrumental music circles, and while the instrumental and textural approaches vary, from smooth piano recital to grainy steel-string guitar brushes, the collection hangs together very well. As an introduction to some of these folk and adult music stars, and as an evocation of autumn strolls you might have taken long ago, this is pretty hard to beat."