Chimes

Dance music trio The Chimes (producers Mike Peden and James Locke from Edinburgh and vocalist Pauline Henry, born in Jamaica) enjoyed critical and commercial success at the beginning of the 90's on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield with their eponymous album and the clutch of singles that were released from it.

We've all heard chimes playing in the wind. Perhaps there's no more soothing sound; these random but strangely melodic aural cues can transport you instantly to another time and place: your parents' back porch when you were a child, or the inn by the sea that you visited last summer. Wind Chimes puts these sounds on your computer. It uses your sound card's built-in synthesizer and sophisticated algorithms to replicate the unpredictable patterns of real wind chimes. It can also do much more: select the "Piano Bar" preset, and you're sipping ice tea at a favorite café. Try "Glorious Sunrise" and you're lying on a secluded beach in the early morning. "Acoustic Journey" boldly leads you to new harmonic and rhythmic concepts in music. Best of all, you can create your own ambient sounds– select chime types varying from pianos to gunshots, wind speeds from a gentle breeze to a raging storm, and many other settings to create just the ambient soundscape you want. You'll never hear the same pattern twice, because Wind Chimes, like the wind, is always changing.

Perhaps the most unusual instrument ever created by the percussion company J.C. Deagan Inc., Shaker Chimes were invented by John Calhoun Deagan in 1900. Also known as Organ Chimes, they are one of the rarest Deagan instruments, with only a few dozen sets still known to exist.

We're excited to announce the release of Angelic Chimes, an extensively-sampled struck chimes sample library for Kontakt. The chimes have a pure, vibrant tone with a tremendous amount of sustain–in fact, some of the chimes ring for well over 30 seconds. Of course, this can be altered using the built-in attack, decay, and release controls, which allow you to sculpt the chimes’ volume envelope into rich pad sounds or short percussive hits.

Amnesty International commemorates its 50th anniversary with the release of an album featuring the cream of the world’s music talent covering Bob Dylan songs, with contributions from a huge variety of artists including Adele, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Ke$ha, The Gaslight Anthem, Sting, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Sinéad O’Connor, Kris Kristofferson, Bad Religion, Marianne Faithfull, My Chemical Romance, Bryan Ferry, Pete Seeger and many more. Entitled Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan the album features 73 tracks on four CDs.

Chimes of Freedom, Lynne Arriales 15th album as a leader, was recorded in Belgium for release by Challenge Records International. Lynne is joined by renowned musicians, Dutch bassist/co-producer Jasper Somsen, drummer, E.J. Strickland, and guest vocalist, K.J. Denhert.

The legendary Shakespearean character Sir John Falstaff, the notoriously drunken, obese, and yet charming companion of the young Henry V, steps up from supporting character in several plays to the central focus of Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight, considered by many critics the best of the director's acclaimed Shakespeare films. Welles held this film in high regard and considered it along with The Trial his best work. As he remarked in 1982: "If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I'd offer up." Many critics, including Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Rosenbaum, also consider it Welles's finest work.

Note on the Studio Canal edition: Probably due to an endless legal war over the rights of the film, Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight) has been rarely seen and exists today as bootleg or as poor quality DVD transfers. However, the film obviously underwent a complete restoration prior to 2005 and was released in France in a pristine DVD by Studio Canal. Sadly, this edition was quickly taken off the market soon after its release.