Search - Peter Davison :: Glide / Star Gazer

Davison captures calm yet ecstatic feelings.

05/22/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have been collecting Davison's CD's for several years. I have watched him grow from the melodic style of this CD to an atmospheric approach in his adagio series. He manages in these later CD's to have enough melody to keep the music interesting but never overpowering. He allows the listener to fill in the spaces.I have several friends who practice massage and swear by Davison's music. And I am in a yoga class in which the instructor only uses Davison's adagio series. Davison manages to tap into one's emotions yet never panders to the obvious. He is a skilled composer who knows how to write for a wide variety of instruments from around the world. His music is evocative, ethereal and yet I can still touch it on a human level. This is clearly the work of a man who has both feet on the ground while his imagination is left free to create without restrictions. Highly recommended."

The Best of Peter Davison...almost!

Drew | San Diego, CA United States | 07/06/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I will say right up fron that I am not a big fan of Peter Davison's music. I tend to prefer darker ambient music, and I feel there are more evocative artists of "lighter" ambient, like Chuck Wild's "Liquid Mind" or Jeff Pearce. However, giving credit where credit is due, "Star Gazer" was the first electronic ambient music I had ever bought, and I can easily recommend this release for those who enjoy Davison's music. "Glide", while not as good (in ONLY my opinon, it seems), is a good example of his early work, full of lush, "flowing in the wind" synth chords. It is very relaxing, and, although one of Davison's earliest pieces, is very much in the direction he would go with his successful "Adagio" series in the second half of his career. However, IMHO, "Star Gazer" is the more interesting of the two works, with one MAJOR asterisk (which I will explain later). I bought "SG" in mid-1987, and, at that time, "space music" to me was "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Tales From Topographic Oceans", or acoustic music like Wyndham Hill was putting out at that point. I happened upon "SG" in a New Age shop with a friend of mine who purchased Kevin Braheny's "The Way Home" (which was at the time titled "Perelandra"... and was by far a superior piece of space music, although it would take me two years to come to understand this). I was attracted to the variety of the music on it and to the truly spacey feel of it from the start. The first side of the cassette (!) contained the sci-fi "Luminous", with it's shimmering synth and slow/echoing acoustic guitar, the warm synth and calming flute of "Blue Spiral", the drifting flute/sax interplay of "Binary Companions", the bittersweet piano/flute/strings of "Milky Way Tears", and the spacey "Parallax". However, it was the second side of the cassette that really got me. "Star Gazer 1-3" (I know...) had such a variety of moods on it. There is no doubt in my mind that it was heavily influenced by Braheny's "Perelandra". The opening synth on "Star Gazer 1" sounded like an English horn, and the piece was so evocative of drifting in space, it was amazing. This piece ended an en echo chamber of space noise and led into "SG2", half a melancholy solo piano piece by Davison and half a sad string quartet piece that took you into deeper feelings than Davison ever again inspired (kind of like the somber cello solo on William Ackerman's "Last Day at the Beach" on the "Conferring with the Moon" release). The last part, "SG3", brought the synth back in and made you feel warm and safe again, ending the recording on a positive note. "Star Gazer 1-3" used to be almost nightly listening for me back then, and I was thrilled when "SG" was released on CD, but my joy quickly turned into profound disappointment. The CD was missing "Star Gazer 1", which was critical in setting the tone for "SG 2-3". I found out from Higher Octave that the master for "SG1" (as well as for a beautiful shimmering harp and floating synth piece called "Nebula" that was originally #4 on side one) were damaged in a fire and could not be trasferred to the CD. Without "SG1" (and, to a lesser extent, "Nebula"), "Star Gazer" would never be the same for me, and I don't think it is as evocative for new listeners. Thankfully, I had the cassette copied onto a CD, hiss and all, so I can hear "Star Gazer" as it was intended to be heard. For the rest of you, though, this combined package will have to do. It gives a wide feel for Davison's musical ability, and I think it is his best moments of songwriting...even without the missing compositions."