Detailed Reviews [Cyrille Verdeaux - 1983 - "Journey To Tantraland"]

Cyrille Verdeaux (France / USA) - 1983 - "Journey To Tantraland"
(60 min, 'Clearlight Music')

Prologue. Until now, I haven't heard any solo albums by the former leader and main Clearlight mastermind Cyrille Verdeaux. "The Journey To Tantraland album was composed to harmonize the energies and thoughts of sexual nature". (The latter sentence is a quote that I took directly from the booklet of this CD.)

The Album. I understand that the first package containing the second Clearlight album and this CD will most likely be also the last one that I receive from the California-based label "Clearlight Music". However, I can't praise the musical production, which isn't worthy of it. While I was 'traveling' in that "Tantraland", my wife, who practice meditation for the last ten years or so, entered my room and said: "You should tape this wonderful music for my meditations". Yes, and I am taking a solemn vow that the "Journey To Tantraland" CD contains nothing but electronic sounds that, apparently, can be used for meditation. Indeed, this album has nothing whatsoever to do with Progressive Music. I even doubt that it was really composed. Five compositions on the album consist of sets of terribly monotonous, slow, and almost totally synthetic (i.e. sequenced) "passages" of synthesizers along with sound effects and noises. The parts of a bamboo flute are featured only on Rainbow Bubbles and Flying Carpet (tracks 2 & 7). On the first of them, however, I hear not the solos of a flute, but their echoes that, probably should imply those Rainbow Bubbles. Flying Carpet is the only track on the album that contains real passages and solos of flute and synthesizer, and interplay between them as well. So, on the whole, this "Journey" is just another example of a push-button music or, in other words, dead music (which is a more precise definition of it).

Summary. It was really hard for me to listen to this album until the end. Being a musician myself, I felt a great disharmony while I was listening to it. Perhaps it's because I am familiar with many other examples of meditative music, including the works of the Shankar brothers, Subramaniam, and other Indian masters. I really like their meditative music works, as they were really composed and, what's central, performed mostly with the use of real instruments. Our modern culture affords us the tecnology to make music-like works from nothing. Only I can't understand why many established Progressive Music magazines and webzines not only publish many of the reviews of dead-music albums, but also praise them in almost all of those reviews. Certainly, I didn't expect to take this "Journey" after I listened to the "Forever Blowing Bubbles" album by the same Cyrille Verdeaux. To read the review on this album, click here.

VM. April 5, 2002