OASIS KNOWLEDGE BASE

A free-form repository of information about albums, labels, artists, the music business and the history of the recording industry and music in general.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT "PANGAEA"

"One of the most moving albums I have heard in a long time. The concept is beautiful and the music bears
that out."
Renee Gelpi CELEBRATION STARSONG CIUT-FM Toronto, Canada

"The best New Age album I have heard in the last four years."
Mychael Danna HEARTS OF SPACE RECORDS Artist

"Very simply, this is one the finest debuts that has come our way in years."
Lloyd Barde BACKROADS DISTRIBUTORS Corte Madera, CA

"A masterwork!"
DIMENSIONS MAGAZINE Toronto, Canada

"Pangaea is a transformative musical experience"
SOURCES MAGAZINE Toronto, Ontario

"Combines natural sounds and music brilliantly. The best album of its kind ever!"
Tom Plewman, The MADRIGAL Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

"Refreshing, innovative and highly evocative! The imagery and feeling of prehistoric Earth is captured beautifully."
Peter Roth GIFTS FROM THE EARTH Toronto, Canada

CD REVIEWS

"Pangaea" by Stephen Bacchus
Reviewed by Jack Clarke Visions Magazine
Stephen Bacchus has a real winner in his debut album for Oasis, titled Pangaea. The name is derived from the probable Earth of 250 million years ago, when the continents were joined together as one large land mass. A blend of natural sounds plus exotic acoustic and electronic instruments, played by over a dozen musicians, Pangaea is a unique and particularly lovely composition. Neoclassical in scope, it could easily be the musical score for a fine movie. Like many movies, this ambitious release was two years in the making, requiring two producers, three recording engineers and three artists for the distinctive cover and liner notes. The recording and mixing took seven months. Drawing from many musical traditions, the album very effectively captures the ambiance of a world of greater peace than our current planet. In addition to several synthesizers, instruments of the world, such as the mohoceno, koto, santur, and sarod are featured. Bacchus currently divides his time between producing other Canadian New Age artists and researching his next album project. He has been composing for thirty years, which is evident on the smoothly flowing Pangaea, a truly marvelous listening experience.

"Bardo" by Stephen Bacchus

Review copyright (c) 1997 by Syd Baumel
Forget those scary monster images of the afterlife, Tibetan style. Stephen Bacchus's musical take on the forbidding realms of the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) is mostly lush, tender, and postcard pretty. Many of these eleven tracks would be sweet enough for the ears of a newreborn baby.

There is much of East meets West here, starting with Bacchus's impressive world orchestra, wherein English horns blow side by side with shakuhachi flutes, kotos, and sonorous synthesizers. The Canadian composer's sentimental melodies often seem Oriental one moment, Western the next. It's a tantalizing multicultural morph.

Bacchus ranks among the best of New Age composers because he is a composer, not a musically undistinguished soundscape artist. Nowhere is this more evident than in "Impermanence/Bardo II: The Wind of Karma." The main musical stream of this seven-minute composition is a light, even joyous koto-driven march. But tugging alongside it is a more Western, sadness-tinged countertheme, movingly played by a swelling, vibrato string ensemble. Emphasizing the tension, a hollow bass and a boxy synthesizer mark the implacable march of time with cold, staccato jabs. Perhaps it's this "wind of karma" and the laws of impermanence which dictate that good and bad, happy and sad, should forever dog each other's steps. Bacchus has captured this bittersweet reality in this exquisite piece of new music.

Review Lloyd Barde Heartbeats Catalog Magazine
The third release from Canada's Stephen Bacchus is a delicate masterpiece of modern World music, inspired by the "Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)". Drawing from Oriental cultures, the mysticism of the far East, and then venturing into the void of "the Bardo state," Bacchus weaves his own unique symphony with keyboards, percussion and electronics, with additional shakuhachi, oboe, recorders, flutes and strings. Bacchus creates masterful, free-flowing impressionistic music from many traditions, past, present & future.

Review from Music Design In-Review Magazine
Inspired in part by the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead), keyboard instrumentalist Stephen Bacchus takes us on a musical journey into past lives and ancient incarnations on BARDO. Bacchus' deep sense of harmonic atmosphere and curious melodies are brought to life through a fusion of synthesizers and a blend of exotic instruments including harp, Persian zither, koto, native flute, percussion, oboe and more. BARDO is a kaleidoscope of triumphant soundscapes, mellow meditations and ancient influences that will appeal to any new age fan.

ARTISTS

Peter Ball (Australia) has been working for many years in the areas of both instrumental music and sound design. Much of his work has been centred around creating minimalist atmospheres using tape recorders and a variety of CMI's, for projects both real and imaginary. The track ''Toll'' was designed as a piece of music by which to relax and unwind. It is one of a series of pieces carried by a simple yet subtle melody which push 'the boundaries' of referential tempo so as to create the effect of actually slowing down. ''Toll'' was completed in 1993.

"Toll" is a track on The Ambient Eclipse

LABEL NEWS

HIC SUNT LEONES new releases:

ALIO DIE new digipack live in Prague OUT NOW !
A sound document of the concert performed live at Church of St. Simon and Juda, Prague 1- Old Town, May 23, 2009 and presented as the part of the concert series called Music Infinity, organized by Palac Akropolis and Josef Sedlon, in association with Instituto Italiano di Cultura. it comes in a beautiful digipack with the beautiful pictures by Jan Kruml. ERA 2060 2

AGLAIA White Maps is a flowing sonic-flux in 5 tracks ,it displays a beautiful spectrum of circular waves-sounds with a rich range of dinamic's frequencies. The intense and expanded landscapes remarks the usual Aglaia's sound but with more accent on a "symphonic", and a "choral" quality. CD HSL 051

AGLAIA Nacked Movements is a unique electronic work, innovative respect the previously AGLAIA's albums. Twelve essential tracks, direct and minimal. Ascetic and natural. The places that are described here should be like a nocturnal snow-fall, or a sultry and hot summer afternoon, the rolling of air on a lake's shore..or a simple movements of leaves. It is the artist's sensibility that translate the reflective and subtle emotions into the fragile poetry of sounds. CD HSL 052

AGLAIA Reverberant Skies follow eleven steps to the cosmic horizon. A meditative sound-flux, to connect with the interior skies, or to the sky we can see from the earth, in a brilliant night full of stars. Another "oceanic" album quite different from the previously four ones, and more close with “Private History of clouds” with Alio Die. CD HSL 053

The Music Infinity concert performed live at Church of St. Simon and Juda, Prague 1- Old Town, May 23, 2009
It comes in a nice digipack, too.Multimedia bonus track: Nereus Live Video (MPEG-1 playable on Mac & PC)
ERA 2059-2

We have a limited stock of this beautiful previously abum by STEFANO SCALA of harmonic singing.

Bagliori dell'anima is a path in harmony with all evolutionary ways toward the truth, a path of reverent study of the harmonic laws great and small; is about relating the spectral harmonic sound current to the rhythm pulse current – harmonic space in harmonic time.

(MM Music Magazines -Frank Sonwell )

Mp3 of the new cds will be added to the site, soon.

http://www.aliodie.com

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