New Age

George Winston Sees The Wood For The Trees

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In 1996, Christmas came early for George Winston when he took home the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.

This is NAGCHAMPA. That’s the New Age Grammy Challenge: Healing Assessments of Musicians Perceived as Awful. I’m listening to every album that ever won, or that was ever nominated for, the Grammy Award for best New Age, Ambient, or Chant album. Originally, I was doing this because I wanted to better understand just what this whole New Age thing is all about. Now I’m doing it because I really enjoy New Age music.

George Otis Winston III, who passed away in 2023, was no stranger to the Grammy Awards. As well as triumphing in the New Age category in 1996, he got a nomination for Best Children’s Music Album (for a collaboration with Meryl Streep!), and one for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, for a collection of Doors songs reconsidered for solo piano. He looks just like Rufus from Bill & Ted in his Spotify profile picture.

Despite winning the 1996 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, and despite initially finding success on Windham Hill, George was one of those artists who dismissed the “New Age” label. So how would George have described his music?

George claimed that he always played in one of three styles: A New Orleans R&B kind of thing; a Fats Walleresque “stride piano”; and a melodic style of his own which he described as “rural folk piano”. He dabbles in all three styles throughout Forest, the album which won him his Grammy. But he mostly seems to stick to that “rural folk” sound. And what an evocative and affecting sound it is. Apparently, George first became interested in playing the piano having heard Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It shows; not just in his uplifting lyrical style, but also in just how Christmassy much of his work seems to be.

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The Winter Man Cometh

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I’ve decided to revive the NAGCHAMPA project.

Reminder: NAGCHAMPA = New Age Grammy Challenge: Healing Assessments of Musicians Perceived as Awful.

Following my foolhardy metal quest, I feel like I need some quiet and visionary music as badly as I sometimes need a cup of tea and a flapjack.

It’s been five years. But if you remember, I’m studying every album that ever won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, in an attempt to understand what makes New Age Music so New Age. The closest I came to a definition was this: New Age Music is applied ambient music. Or, it’s spiritual ambience. It’s music that aims to make you feel better, and succeeds.

But while my back was turned, the Grammy guys broadened the scope of this awards. Since 2023, the category has been “Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album”.

“Ambient” I get, but “chant”? Will there be chanting? Was there always chanting?

I swear, I had no idea that the 2025 Grammy Awards were taking place as I wrote this thing. The BBC didn’t even include the New Age category in their roundup of the winners. It looks like it went to Wouter Kellerman, Eru Matsumoto, and Chandrika Tandon’s Triveni. A worthy winner? We’ll see, when I finally get to 2025 in this project, some 16 years from now.

Because we’ve only just made it to 1994 here, and it’s Paul Winter’s time to shine.

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I Am A Hypnotist. Are You A Hypnotist Too? (10 Albums From 2023)

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According to Spotify Wrapped, I listened to 14,791 songs in 2023.

One thing I didn’t like from Spotify Wrapped was this:

Apparently, Spotify considers you to be some kind of mysterious shaman if you listen to albums all the way through – that is, if you approach the art as the artist attended.

Boo to that. I’m far from a purist, but I don’t like how disposable things feel these days.

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Farewell, Edgar Froese

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Edgar Froese

Edgar Froese died on January 20, 2015. That was the day before my birthday, so I didn’t find out until the following week.

Edgar Froese was a founding member of the German electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream. Between 1967 and 2015, he was the only constant member. In that time, the band released over 100 albums, of which I’ve only heard about nine. Though I’ve quite enjoyed each, of those nine, only one has ever truly stood out for me: 1974’s Phaedra.

Phaedra is a masterpiece. I cannot begin to describe the meanings I’ve come to attach to its unearthly sounds and its slow, sad, yawning melodies. There was a six month period about 10 years ago when I would put this album on repeat at a barely audible volume just before I went to sleep. It’s therefore safe to say that the music of Phaedra may very well have soundtracked my dreams.

To wake up to its alien soundscapes, bleary eyed and heady at four in the morning, is an indescribable experience. Phaedra sounds particularly incredible when you’re cold and lonely in the dark.

So farewell, Edgar Froese. He leaves behind an immense, timeless, and peerless body of work, but for me it’s all about Phaedra, and this track in particular:

http://youtu.be/P8J2doVjui4

Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares. One of the most devastating pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

If that were the sum of his work, he could still be viewed as one of the finest, most influential musicians of the past century. That this song is but the visible tip of an unfathomable, ever-shifting iceberg is really quite incredible.

A live version from 2005:

Bloody hell.

New! Music Section!

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Oh look! There’s a new tab at the top of this website!

Let’s see, what is it…music. It’s music!

Yes, I make music. And now I have a place to archive it!

There you’ll find my entire discography to date, plus links to my Bandcamp page, where you can download things.

Actually, that’s not my entire discography. Missing is an album I put out last year as The Filing Cabinets. It was the same note repeated endlessly over the course of a five disc boxset.

I’m proud of it, because it’s the first album in history that takes longer to listen to than it did to record. It’s not much fun, though. But if anyone really wants to hear it, just let me know, and I’ll send it to you.

Maybe it will one day be reissued as a lavish vinyl package, complete with unreleased tracks and remixes from such big names as Robin Tertuttle, Pernice Chyce, Pulse Wrist, Dirk Brick and Cassandra “Seismic” Lifestone.