Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: Solstice

  • Short Stories

    Short Stories

    Ambient Solstice aka NoizeFiller or to his friends JJ Rey is a man who believes his music is God given, delivered to him in divine style, with flair and panache, that sees old traditional Jazz styles combined with modern recording wizardry, to deliver a style which even in today’s world of experimental music, must be considered and I have borrowed the word, as it fits, serendipitous.

    Over the beautiful eleven songs, Jazz and New Age greats such as Michael Manring, Jeff Oster, Dave Luxton, Billy Denk, Sean O’Bryan Smith, Jim Kimo West, Gerald Albright, Carl Rydlund, John Gregorius, Jeff Franzel, Joe Cook, Tommy Ogle, Edward Frietag and Vail Johnson make magic happen.

    Kicking off this album is In the Key of Rain featuring Jeff Oster on soulful, haunting trumpet with elegant piano and melting synth from Bully Denk, making this the perfect piece to commence a musical voyage of pure enjoyment.

    Moving over several genres in mood, as the music travels through time, space and barriers the lovely Weightless moves into an electronic vibration which is strong, demanding to be observed.

    Track seven Sunday Afternoon is a charming sidestep featuring Sean O’Bryan Smith on base, backed with an ambient soundscape adding an electronic quality to the catchy, upbeat song reminiscence to music of the early 1940’s.

    Starlite is an absolutely outstanding piece in a body of work which is all outstanding, as it returns to the more traditional 1920’s style of Jazz; clean, clear, cool and sensual.

     Nightfall gently allows the rich and entertaining music to come to a gentle close with a pure electronic vibration, returning one to the everyday world after having revelled in a world of captivating, Jazz Fusion which is a long overdue, immensely refreshing, addition to the “New Age’ genre of music.

    Short Stories can definitely be considered in a category of its own: new age Jazz Fusion or unique ‘experimental ambient’. Really it does not matter in the least.

    Close the door, pull the cork from a good bottle of wine, dim the lights, snuggle into a soft, comfortable chair, turn off your phone and indulge in every single, carefully crafted note of Short Stories.

  • A Year of Nature Poems

    A Year of Nature Poems

    Beautifully illustrated this gorgeous series of twelve poems, one each dedicated to the months of the year, make a wonderful treasury of thanksgiving and understanding of the some of the very many things that go to make up the simple pleasures of our world today.

    Joseph Coelho and Kelly Louise Judd, in A Year of Nature Poems have created a gentle and delicate volume of prose, with each month presenting a fact based on the following piece of poetry. Although set out for the Northern hemisphere the words and illustrations are simply beautiful in their context.

    The carefully chosen pieces begin with January, in a pieced dedicated to Starlings and the legend that surrounds them remaining from the 16th century, when a flock of Starling warred over the City of Cork in Ireland; a phenomenon not ever known before or since. The metre is gentle, melodious and captivating.

    Frogs, daffodils and climate change make their way across the pages with inviting illustrations, and in May we meet the Mayfly, a wonderous insect who spends several years in the larval stage before emerging and living its life at full speed, for just one hour only.

    June heralds in the Summer Solstice in the Northern Climes and the Winter Solstice in the Southern hemisphere, with the poetry paying tribute to a time of celebration for many cultures when the sun is at its highest, radiating light and warmth.

    Scrumping, a term foreign to many parts of the world but well known in Britain, is the ‘stealing’ of the left-over fruits of the trees and vines at the end of a long, plentiful and hot Northern summer, has been dedicated to August. You can feel children climbing the massive old tree is search of pear tree spoils, the ripe fruit on the grape vines, delicious in their taste, the juicy plums snatched from the Nuns walled garden; such summer time fun.

    November sees the trees beginning to lose their leaves, the animals preparing for a time of hibernation, getting ready for the long, cold chill of the winter to come, but when December finally arrives, snowflakes falling, it brings a promise of a white Christmas, a reminder that to achieve something of great beauty, such as a snowflake, hard work needs to first be done.

    A Year of Nature Poems is a glorious celebration of the Months of the year, suitable for all ages and a wonderful medium for reading aloud, for older children learning to enjoy the real beauty of poetry, with illustrations to enhance the moment, and for older readers who totally enjoy wonderful combinations of words used to create so many marvellous pictures in the mind.

  • Pagan Portals – Have a Cool Yule How-To Survive (and Enjoy) the Mid-Winter Festival

    Pagan Portals – Have a Cool Yule How-To Survive (and Enjoy) the Mid-Winter Festival

    This may be a little late for you to be able to utilise the contents of this book for this Christmas, but it will certainly be a great guide for next Christmas, one that, for those whom, while they enjoy Christmas, do not enjoy the cost, family drama’s and consumption of far too much rich, festive season foods.

    How to survive the festive season is an annual issue that in many cases never seems to be able to come to a totally amicable conclusion, which when you look at the basis for gathering at this time of year, to celebrate in the Christian tradition, the happy advent of the birth of Jesus, does eventually lead to the idea that perhaps there is a better, easier, less stressful way to celebrate.

    Christmas is not traditionally a Christian festival, as it travels far further back in time than what could be considered as the Christian application of what was already a feasting time, anchored firmly in what many refer to as Pagan times or folkloric, but in reality had a very definite purpose, that of utilisation of resources, foods and the slow passing of the winter season.

    Known by many names such as Winter Solstice or Mid-Winter Festival, Saturnalia, Yalda, or simply Yule, the modern name, Christmas (Christs-mass) was created along with the Gregorian calendar and the Christianising of the feast time. When the 25th of December was the date proclaimed to be officially celebrated as the birth of Jesus, many of the old pagan celebrations either died out or became a part of the modern Christmas celebrations, although the traditional time of 12 Days of celebration remained entrenched, though for many the meaning has been lost in time.

    As you look back through time, to the alternate or pagan meaning and reasons why, so many of the modern celebrations make sense: where did plum pudding come from, why is so much food consumed, or purchased only at Christmas time, why do we consider gathering as family group, even when we hate the idea? So many aspects to wonder about and throughout the pages of this wonderful book, which will soon become your bible on the subject matter of Christmas, you will find the answers.

    Fascinating, educational and in many cases a guideline to sanity in an otherwise insane time, the true story and history behind Christmas makes for fascinating reading.

    The Victorian’s took Christmas to an unprecedented scale, focusing on the wealthy of society and to a large degree overlooking the poor, with the industrial revolution slowly bringing Christmas into what was once and for a short time an affordable celebration. How the world has changed!

    Heading up Chapter 5, The Art of Interaction, the poet Brendan Kennelly observes,’ Christmas is a season of contradictions. The very idea of Christmas has something contradictory about it…….What is Christmas anyway? Is it the celebration of one of the world’s most significant spiritual events? Or is it an orgy of commercialism, a cynical exploitation of the dreams of children and the end-of-year exhaustion of adults?’

     

    Perhaps he has a very valid point because whether you be Christian or Pagan or atheist, Christmas is a spiritual time, and has been since its inception; therefor, perhaps the entire event needs to be reviewed, so that next Christmas people can come together to enjoy the event in peace, happiness and enjoyment, which after all was the original intent.

    Have a Cool Yule to one and all, courtesy of Melusine Draco and her wonderful words of wisdom, offered in the hope that Christmas can once again become a celebration of the good and the simple pleasures of life, to be found in a combination of pagan and Christian traditions.