Bill Canty - Elysian Peace

Australian musician/composer Bill Canty is out to get you. His musical experience runs the gamut from orchestras to Rock 'n' Roll bands. A classical pianist by training, Canty has a profound talent for musical subtlety and grace. On Elysian Peace, Canty practices both in an ambient environment. Twelve five minute compositions inspire relaxation and peace while encouraging active listening through the use of stepped variation and subtle gradation of themes.

Bill Canty's Elysian Peace is among the most difficult types of albums to review. There is no specific song structure; there aren't even any songs, per se. Elysian Peace is 60 minutes of gentle musical breezes that blow gently across a nearly still body of water. The breeze here doesn't so much touch the water as kiss it gently from time to time as it rolls and wheels across the horizon. Canty uses electronic instrumentation and ambient settings to create movement that isn't so much inertial as spatial. Twelve five-minute tracks are not so much differentiated from one another as they are extensions of one to another.

Canty uses undulations of sound, brief glances of melody, random notes and a dawdling sense of development to craft the ultimate relaxation/meditation disc. I'm not talking the cheap and terminal recordings you find in new age boutiques or mall havens like Brookstone, but a vibrant, ambient new age recording that has life and movement within it. Elysian Peace holds the listener's interest because within the still calm of the music is another world that beckons the listener: A world full of energy and currents you can't see but which pull at you all the same.

Canty mixes up the "instruments" and sounds throughout the sixty minute recording to display a gradual change in effects over time. You might hear the electronic equivalent of glockenspiel, guitar, synth, water bells, orchestras and most anything else you can imagine. All of these sounds and effects are woven into the textures of Elysian Peace so as to become practically indistinct. Canty seems to have a real talent for creating these musical tableaus in four dimensions. Nothing is ever flat or concrete.

Bill Canty is an unusually talented composer in the realm of electronic music. Elysian Peace is perfect for relaxation or meditation, but also provides ample musical nutrition for the active listener. Like the deep and powerful currents that often lay far below the still surface of water, Elysian Peace moves with its own inner power and grace. There is too much energy here and too much raw potential for change to not listen closely. Bravo.

Rating: 4.5 Stars (Out of 5)

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I've never much meditated to music before. So it was quite a shift putting on this CD and settling in to discover that it was nigh on impossible to go blank and empty when listening to such fantastic, textured, uplifting music.

The music is visually stimulating, evocative of shape-shifting moods. Angels singing, lounging on comfortable clouds, their busy glowing fingers effortlessly cascading up and down their harp strings. A giant in rubber boots, humming to himself as he waters his floating garden, his watering can causing a summer sun-shower to fall. A space ship bursts through the atmosphere, then another. They burst like comet-flowers, spraying spores of pink across the ocean, the sun shimmering like a dance.

Track 3 has a catchy hook and a classic feel, as does track 4 which suggests a movie set in colonial-era tropics until a jovial string section starts to jig, and the scene flips from sunset plains to a ballroom dance – long dresses swishing below stiff collared chins.

Track 5 is my favourite, for the sheer strength of the main dramatic hook, but it is track 7 that affords me the headspace to meditate. The music widens, the scope expands, and my mind follows suit.

Later I am listening again, trying to do some work, but the music is powerful. It is the stuff of daydreams, not mundane details. I put down my pen and stand to stare out of the window at the autumn trees.

"No more work today", the music seems to say, "Not now".

I close my eyes and I am flying, Peter Pan style. I swoop down into the valley, then up and over the hill...

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[T]he music has been genuinely sweated over, this thing is a perfectionists dream. As usual I am fascinated by the textures he has chosen and his piano playing in Part 12 is just gorgeous. Some of it is just so subtle and delicate that you wonder how on earth he did it.

I think that Bill's work transcends the genre, I have listened to way too many "Celtic New Age" albums of late and Elysian Peace exhibits none of the "cookie cutter" cliches that you will find over and over again.

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Sometimes you come across a CD that really stands out from the crowd, a case in point being Elysian Peace by Bill Canty. It's a little unusual, being designed for the relaxation market, but is far above the normal standard of available relaxation music.

The standard of the compositions alone is wonderful, and the production quality is easily as good as that found in expensive studio albums. All in all, the pieces blend seamlessly together and work superbly - either for relaxation, or for just great listening pleasure.

I have heard some of Bill Canty's works before and this album once again showcases his unique arranging and compositional talents.

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