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Radiowave, Journey Thru Oz!
Radiowave is an Mp3.com band (or rather, an artist, since its sole member
is Greg Paugh) who performs ambient music and seeks to, as the CD booklet
notes, "expand the palette of textures and sonic colors now available to
guitarists." This is certainly a lofty goal and if Paugh doesn't expand the
guitarists' palette he certainly pulls a wide variety of sounds from the
existing palette (and all of the pieces on the album were recorded with only
a guitar synthesizer without sequencing, so there is no studio trickery
involved). There is no doubt that he shows the wide range of sounds the
modern guitarist now has to work with.
However, in this case, I must question his intentions. Cool sounds are
great, especially for ambient music, but listeners want to hear good
compositions, too. Paugh's "sonic expansions" would be more effective in
expanding the palettes of guitarists everywhere if there were good
compositions to go along with them. Sadly, Journey Thru Oz! suffers
because it does only what the artist intends: present new sounds to fellow
guitarists.
This is not to say that the music is bad - it actually works well as
easy-listening background music for reading a book or playing a computer
game. It's unobtrusive and very atmospheric and certainly very relaxing. But
it could easily be passed off as another all-synthesizer album made to
provide some nice background music and nothing else. Simply put, there would
be nothing remarkable about this album if it wasn't for it being created
entirely on guitar. Nothing in the sound of makes it particularly deserving
of separation from the nondescript music that comes from the New Age camp
these days.
Well, Journey Thru Oz is an ambient album with loads and loads of
different guitar sounds, but nothing more. If this sounds like your kind of
music, go for it, if not, don't. The album does have a great atmosphere
overall, so if you want some unobtrusive background music, this album will
do the trick. Otherwise, be cautious. ~Jon Murphree~
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