Search - Kevin Braheny :: Lullaby for the Hearts of Space

What "Space Music" is All About

Tristan MacAvery | Rochester, NY USA | 10/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Stephen Hill, creator of the long-running NPR music program "Music from the Hearts of Space", defined "space music" as music that gives the feeling of expanded or enhanced space. The concept, more feeling than concrete description, is magnificently illustrated in this music by Kevin Braheny. I still have an audio-cassette, released in 1986 through Hill's Hearts of Space label, of this lush and lengthy pair of sonic suites. My only regret is that there doesn't appear to be a CD forthcoming of this wonderful work.



"Lullaby for the Hearts of Space" was recorded live at the studios of KPFA-FM in Berkelely CA, later remastered at Celestial Sound San Francisco by Stephen Hill and Kevin Braheny (thus spake the liner notes). A gentle, hypnotic pulse sets the stage for the lush backdrop of synthesizer music produced on a Serge system that Braheny nicknamed "The Mighty Serge". (Serge Tcherepnin was a pioneer in the creation of the modular synthesizer.) This piece, running over half an hour (despite the liner notes claiming only 25:10) is languid, dream-like, wandering gently through the mind, calming yet focusing the attention gently upon the twists and turns of the music itself.



"After I Said Goodnight" is like a slow walk through a forest, or perhaps a more veldt-like landscape. Above a carpet of cricket-like humming, sounds of deep and distant bells, the croaking of frogs, the occasional hum of insect wings, and an unseen choir of sound and voice vie softly for our attention. The liner notes speak of the piece being "inspired by Emilie Conrad-Da'oud and her movement meditation and healing work called Continuum. It was during one of her enlightening movement classes that hte piece was created." Also lasting more than half an hour (despite the listing of 26:00 in the notes), this work is a delicious background to a simple, free-floating meditation, if you wish to use it so.



I realize that my descriptions are vague, perhaps even ephemeral in themselves -- yet so is the music something that must be experienced more than listened to. Without lyrics, without a specific melody, even without an identifiable "beginning, middle, and end", these fine examples of space music offer the opportunity to relax and to focus, to rest and to re-energize. That's what space music does, and Braheny is a master."