new-music

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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Cower Before The Worst New Age Albums Ever

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Worst New Age Music

People rated their music, and found it wanting.

My quest to listen to every album that ever won, or was nominated for, a New Age Grammy is partly a quest to understand just what the deuce people mean when they describe music as “new age.”

Yet it’s also a quest for the best. I just want to hear some really good new age music.

But you’ve got to take the good with the bad. If you want to understand what makes for a good film, you’ve got to watch Ghostbusters (1984) AND Ghostbusters (2016). You’ve got to watch A New Hope AND The Last Jedi. It’s not enough to explore the glittering towers of the crystal heights. You’ve got to wade into the potent swamps too, areas where the air’s so thick with searing pungent vapours your eyeballs curdle and your tears cake and rot in their ducts.

So I decided to listen to the worst new age music ever made.

Rate Your Music is a site that allows people to rate their music. Through allowing people to rate their music, the site’s developed an extensive database of consensus that you can organise in any way you see fit. In this way, it’s possible to see the albums the Rate Your Music community agrees to be the worst new age albums ever recorded.

Let’s listen to the bottom five, together.

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Enya is My Shepherd

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Enya Shepherd Moons

The battle for the 1993 New Age Grammy was a real clash of the titans. Only New Age heavyweights need apply.

IN THE RED CORNER: Looking to SAIL AWAY with a well-earned gong, it’s the Celtic banríon; the queen of our hearts, our minds, and our souls. It’s ENYA.

IN THE BLUE CORNER: He’s Masanori Takahashi to his parents. But to you and I, he’s the man of love and joy himself, he’s KITARO.

IN THE GREEN CORNER: You swooned to their Folksongs For A Nuclear Village. Tonight they canter to conquer. It’s SHADOWFAX.

IN THE YELLOW CORNER: They dream in orange. They dream in German. Tonight, they dream of victory. You’ve had this dream before. It’s the mighty TANGERINE DREAM.

IN THE MAUVE CORNER (for this battle’s taking place in a pentagonal ring): Is he finally ready to burst forth from his Chryssomallis? It’s YANNI, ya’know?

Picture those five New Age prizefighters, primed by their New Age coaches in their colourful corners. A beaming woman walks into the centre of the five-sided ring, holding a sign aloft. On the sign is a number. The number is one. She’s followed by a grizzled salt-and-pepper ex-sailor in a striped shirt. He turns to each corner in turn, making eye contact with every contender, gruffly demanding a good, clean fight. A bell rings. Our five peaceful fighters rush into the middle. Five potent powderkegs holding five flaming matches. When they meet in the middle, the universe swallows its tongue.

Enya won. A deserved win? We’ll see.

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A Chip on the Shoulder of Giants

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Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire 7

The 1992 New Age Grammy went to Chip Davis and his Mannheim Steamroller group. Fresh Aire 7 is a concept album about the number seven. It’s well naff.

When you take a deep dive into an unfamiliar music genre, you discover entire worlds you never knew existed. Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Mannheim Steamroller. But it turns out they’re quite a big deal. They’ve released more than 70 albums, and people seem to go nuts for them. Nine of their albums went Gold, three went Platinum, and four went multi-Platinum. What the ‘ell?!

I first met them during the 1991 Grammy Awards, when their Yellowstone album got a nomination for the New Age gong. I described that collection as “pure Disneyland”, but not necessarily new age. But in listening to it, I discovered Mannheim Steamroller’s formidable back catalogue, which I was delighted to find contained a number of Halloween albums.

Of course, I listened to the first in their Halloween series. 23 tracks, “deranged by Chip Davis”! It’s a strong contender for the strangest album I’ve ever heard. The first half contains a number of seasonally-appropriate classical compositions arranged for affordable synths. Toccata in de Mole, The Hall of the Mountain King, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Night on Bald Mountain – that sort of thing. None of them sound particularly good. It’s certainly unnerving, but not necessarily in the way they intended. It’s uncanny, like a robot humming to itself in the oil shower. But halfway through its mammoth 90 minute run-time, the album transforms into one of those Halloween sound effects records. There’s over 40 minutes of creepy ambiance that includes a long spell spent on an alien spaceship. It’s quite the tonal shift.

The album’s bizarre, and about as far away from cool as it’s possible to get – which obviously makes it an essential listen. It’s definitely going to become a staple of future Halloweens. And as we enter the festive season, I’m looking forward to listening to the group’s Christmas albums. The first two in the series went 6 x Platinum. It’s likely that there are people out there who simply couldn’t imagine Christmas without Mannheim Steamroller. Like I say – a whole world that I never knew existed.

But today, we’re focusing on Fresh Aire 7 – the seventh album in Mannheim Steamroller’s Fresh Aire series of albums, and the winner of the 1992 New Age Grammy. It’s every bit as naff as that Halloween collection, but is it any good? And more importantly, is it new age?

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Shadowfax’s Gentle Canter

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Shadowfax - Folk Songs for a Nuclear Village

Middle Earth or Middle Age?

Poor Windham Hill Records. When the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording was first introduced in 1987, I imagine they started clearing space on the mantelpiece. It must have felt like this new award was created just for them! After all, they were the multi-million selling new age label that may have been responsible for getting the academy to create the new category in the first place.

But despite having two separate label compilations nominated in the first awards, Windham Hill took nothing home. They had a number of horses in the race for the award’s second year, too. Alas, once more, no Grammy for Windham Hill.

Windham Hill missed out on a Grammy at the 1989 awards, too. That year, they didn’t stand a chance: Not a single release from their roster got a nomination. And to add insult to injury? The album that did win, Shadowfax’s Folksongs for a Nuclear Village, was the band’s first album not to be released on Windham Hill!

That must have stung. Many an empty beer can must have been thrown at the TV screen in the Windham Hill office when the 1989 New Age Grammy award winners were revealed.

But what of the album? Was it a worthy winner, or were Windham Hill justified in their (totally imagined by me) contempt?

Let’s find out!

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Yusef Lateef’s Inner Visions of Inner Landscapes

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Yusef Lateef Little Symphony

The second album to win the Grammy for Best New Age Recording will certainly take you places. You might not necessarily enjoy the journey, but the destination is bliss.

The late Yusef Lateef was a worldly innovator, a boundary-breaker who never once rested on his laurels. He didn’t so much book studio time as set himself new challenges – fresh fusions to try, fresh frontiers to conquer. His body of work is an ocean of sound, and I’m still paddling in the shallows.

Up until very recently, I’d only heard one of his albums: 1957’s Before Dawn, which I acquired through Jonny Trunk’s astoundingly generous 50p Friday initiative. Trunk describes Before Dawn as “one of the greatest jazz records of all time.” And while I don’t think I’d count it among my very favourites, its irresistibly groovy progressive bop sounds are often exactly the sort of sounds I want to hear.

30 years after Before Dawn, Yusef Lateef would win the Grammy Award for Best New Age Recording for Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony. As a band leader, it was at least his 37th album. It also seems it was the last record he ever put out.

To go straight from the warm and organic Before Dawn to the austere and paranoid Little Symphony was a bit of a shock. I can only imagine the adventures that took place between his late 50s cool and his late 80s visionary period. I’ve got a lot of listening to do!

But first, let’s munch over the mysterious odyssey that won the New Age Grammy in 1988.

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