Lillian
New member
In the world of ambient music there are mostly electronic musicians. But in the past five years more and more acoustic-oriented musicians have gotten into the action proving the genre has had to grow and change to accommodate the acoustic ambient crowd. Now we have here an album by keyboardist Uma Silbey that has her playing synthesizer on some of these soft, slow, instrumental tunes, as you would expect. But then there are also all-acoustic-piano numbers. Then to confuse the issue she throws in a few compositions featuring both piano and synth. The other main change in ambient music over the past few years is that it has gotten less ambient. The musicians and the audience both now accept occasional and gentle melodies as long as they are not too catchy or blatant. This also is the case with Silbey who weaves a melody in here or there which keeps it interesting. She claims to have incorporated some of the scales that derive from the music of India, which also is unusual for an Anglo Western pianist to do, but what the heck, we are a cosmopolitan, everyone-is-a-neighbor, global community now. Everybody and everything is influencing everyone everywhere. On this new album, ALTERED STATES, Uma Silbey proves to be adept at weaving her magic spell with music and making sounds that penetrate right to the heart and soul while also creating the perfect backdrop for any bodywork, mind journey or spiritual practice you might have in mind. Thankfully there is music for this sort of journey.
