Gandalf Journey to an Imaginary Land Review by Gary Hill
This disc could be put under New Age. It's pretty and quite mellow. That said, there are still some moments that rock a bit. It's an instrumental set that has some space rock along with electronic and folk prog. All in all, this is intriguing and never feels tired or redundant.
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Track by Track Review
Departure
Space music opens this and holds it for a while. Eventually we're taken into melodic sounds that drive this in directions that are more like folk prog. This is quite pretty.
Foreign Landscape Mixing the electronic sounds of the opening number with something that's very Celtic, this is an intriguing piece of music. The modulates from mellower stuff to more rocking music at different points along the ride. It's always cohesive and always effective, though.
The Peaceful Village (Including "The Dance of Joy") Acoustic guitar leads out here. The cut grows from there in a very folk prog sort of motif. This is arguably the mellowest number here. Of course, with that title you'd kind of expect it to be. This is more New Age music than it is pretty much anything else. It works out to more rocking stuff later in the track, though, rising to more prog rock territory.
March Across Endless Plain (Including "The Mirage") - Space music starts this, and the cut works to mellower folk prog from there. This is of epic proportions in terms of length. It works through a number of different angles and sounds. It never rises to really rocking, but has a lot of cool electronic prog style built into it.
The Fruitful Gardens This is a dramatic and rather classically tinged bit of electronic space music. It's quite a classy number.
Sunset at the Crystal Lake (Including "Reflections") This is pretty and quite mellow. It's an effective piece of music that lands in the neighborhood of New Age.
