Deep Thoughts

As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of release and change. In my performances throughout the world I try to transmit to the audience the way I am experiencing sound as I hear it and play it in a style that I will call deep listening. Deep listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep listening is my life practice.
–-Pauline Oliveros

Etherea is a beautifully breathtaking ambient release from electronic composer Jeffrey Koepper. It was produced with ambient legend Steve Roach, whose presence can be felt in the music. The recording is full of warm pulsing meditations,serene soundscapes and deep emotions. Koepper has a unique gift for breathing life into his collection of vintage analogue synthesizers. He elegantly blends the sound textures into deep reflective evolving sound-worlds. This is an excellent CD for deep relaxation, deep thoughts, yoga, meditation, massage and our lives in general.

It may be far too obvious to even mention that Norah Jones' follow-up to her 18-million-unit-selling, eight-Grammy-winning, genre-bending, super-smash album Come Away with Me has perhaps a bit too much to live up to. But that's probably the biggest conundrum for Jones: having to follow up the phenomenal success of an album that was never designed to be so hugely popular in the first place. Come Away with Me was a little album by an unknown pianist/vocalist who attempted to mix jazz, country, and folk in an acoustic setting – who knew? Feels Like Home could be seen as "Come Away with Me Again" if not for that fact that it's actually better. Smartly following the template forged by Jones and producer Arif Mardin, there is the intimate single "Sunrise," some reworked cover tunes, some interesting originals, and one ostensible jazz standard.