Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: eternity

  • A Promise Of Eternity

    A Promise Of Eternity

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    Once a year Award winning Australian composer Jim Ottaway releases an album of exquisite music based in the New Age Electronic fields of composition. His work is eagerly awaited and never fails to enchant.

    A Promise of Eternity is once again a gem of an album with the first track, Path of Destiny, a lovely melodious composition, slightly reminiscent of the sounds of the early 1960’s captured in ethereal format. Towards the end there is a distortion of sounds which on any given day, could be easily considered as a gathering of extra-terrestrials enjoying the moment in time.

    A gentle song is delivered in the beautiful Shadow Dreams, a piece that wafts across time and space to transport the mind to another realm as in dreams; beautiful, dreamy and absolutely delightful.

    Once again, the suggestion of a beat from yesteryear is present in the catchy Horizons Beyond, an uplifting song with many layers of lightness within the complex layers. This is a song full of hope and enjoyment with a very, very nice acoustic climax.

    Moving further down the track listing you come to the downright funky Dancing in Shadow and Light, a step away from his usual deep, melodic compositions and a track which has, dare one say it, has an excellent dance groove.

    The absolutely beautiful A Promise of Eternity is Ottaway in a gentle, reflective and introspective mood. Elegant, with hints of a more formal construction washed with subtle undertones, this is one seriously enchanting piece that allows the mind to drift gently into a place of peace and relaxation.

    Light Dawns is on the album twice; listed at number 3, Light Dawns (re-imagined) is a dreamy and relaxing song encouraging a sense of voyaging through time and space to discover another world. As the final track on the album it once again offers a deeper, but still gentle vibe, with which to return to this mortal coil and continue on knowing there is a gentle promise of eternity to be found.

    In many ways A Promise of Eternity sees Ottaway at play, having some fun in his studio, digging deep into his vault to create some catchy, upbeat melodies. Throughout the twelve tracks there are those which are pure ambient new age, whereas others have a distinct element of the years of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream. Overall a fantastic collection to relax into and enjoy.

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  • When Eternity Touches Time

    When Eternity Touches Time

    Master of Electronica Jim Ottaway is back with his 2020 work When Eternity Touches Time, a most intriguing as always and interesting, slightly more mellow offering than his past releases which have been totally spacy, space travel oriented, other than the tribute album  Beautiful Desolation which saw Ottaway at his zenith in a completely different emotional place to his usual style.

    Mellow, captivating and a stunning example of electronica in its purest form, the tracks simply merge effortlessly into one another, allowing the gentle, reflective and all-encompassing vibe to waft gently and elegantly into the atmosphere.

    Gentle and peaceful, the music created is full of a rather elegant charm which captures the emotions on an almost subliminal basis, there and yet not there, almost mystical in influence as you drift throughout the clouds in search of something unknown, but once again familiar.

    Sharpe clear notes set the structure for Diamonds in the rain, a thoughtful, clean captivating journey of the much-needed rain as it is sought; a lovely segment of ‘clapping sticks’ has been created as possibly representative of the diamonds of raindrops hitting the parched earth as a life giving blessing.

    One of the true beauties of electronica is that there is no set definition of how the music is perceived and understood. The titles of the tracks are the only indicator of what the composer considered as his muse when creating the elements on synthesizer, mixing the alchemy later in the studio, fine tuning the pieces to be as perfect as possible.

    When Eternity Touches Time, the tenth track and signature piece of this twelve-track collection has an almost reverent overtone; slow, chunky with a lovely rich timbre, before a higher, faster melody is introduced, offers a very different vibe to the other more relaxed pieces. A truly captivating composition.

    Just when relaxation is at its emotional peak the intriguing and almost dysfunctional piece Isolated Realms comes into play; perhaps a reflection of the difficult and challenging times in which we live. A wonderful melody runs throughout the piece which holds it together in a somewhat typical Ottaway-ish style before relaxing once again and for the final composition, into a fully-fledged spacy elegance once again, returning a sense of surreal ingenuity to the atmosphere.

    A quote from the man himself sums the work up beautifully and makes the perfect final chord to an outstanding, elegant and deliciously enjoyable series of compositions.

    ‘The skies‘ – the heavens… the heavenly realms.
    Beyond the skies… the quintessential limit. (J. Ottaway)