What songs is your heart singing?
What memories is your heart longing for?

This music is a precious remedy in a human’s mad world. It arouses the spirit and harmonizes it. It lifts it above the everyday worries and gives the listener a long awaited space. You can easily stay in the endless cosmos for a long time. And this Universe is you. The present-day society tends to collapse your inner world in order to more easily manage your consciousness and behavior because it needs obedient slaves. The music of Michele Ippolito is a convenient possibility to free yourself.

Her long awaited album “In The Clouds” is the artist’s second release. Michele Ippolito continues to compose celestial harmonies which create a peaceful state of mind and soul. Her music is perfectly suited for various healing techniques and meditation. Delicate ambient textures very gently support your mind in tranquility helping to realize the sources of your anxieties and sadness.

The music of Michele Ippolito is good for every day life as well as for very special moments of your life.
 
Serge Kozlovsky
http://sergekozlovsky.com
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To be lying in a lush, green field looking up at light clouds on a sunny day is for many the very idea of relaxation. When looking up you are experiencing a powerful atonement while the troubles of everyday seem unimportant and small. Many will also have fond memories of such carefree cloud gazing from their early childhood. 
But sadly there are not many times in grown-up life you are able to throw everything aside and just stretch out in a field and do nothing but looking up. Even in your holidays you will find yourself constantly on the move, even when the idea was to stay still and relax.
This is where Michele Ippolito’s new album In The Clouds has something profound to offer. This one hour long album successfully recreates the very atmosphere of looking up and imagining actually being in and among the clouds. Ippolito’s second album (first being Mystic Moods from 2005) strikes a perfect balance of lightness and vastness; it is not too bright and it is not too cold either.
Simplicity is a keyword here. I find Michele Ippolito’s arrangement to be tasteful and very well done. I must admit that I am a fan of analogue synths, and Ippolito’s is using some fine choir and string synth banks – but it must be said that some listeners might find the sound to be a bit dated. But even if you fall under this category, give it a chance because the album’s true quality lies in the gentle ambient melodies. Michele Ippolito is classically trained on piano and this can easily be heard in the flute, harp and string melodies, which for some reason reminds me of classical music.
In The Clouds strikes a perfect balance of lightness and vastness; it is not too bright and it is not too cold either.
The atmosphere is very much the same throughout the album, but on some parts have a more detached and cold feel, while other parts are considerably brighter – just like a day in the field. After all, the sky is constantly changing. It is hard for me to select one or two favorite tracks because they are all connected, but I absolutely love the colorful second track On Skylark’s Wings.
Other reviewers have compared Ippolito to Chuck Wild’s massively popular Liquid Mind project. I think that is a good comparison, and Wild’s fans will feel right at home here. But Ippolito has managed to create an album that just might be a little lighter and less complex – all in a good way.
For this In The Clouds has been nominated for the 2009 Zone Music Reporter Awards in two categories. After all, looking at the clouds is perhaps the most relaxing thing you can do.
In The Clouds is simply a perfect album if you need something from a 5 minute to a 1 hour timeout. If you give yourself just a small dose of this before a stressful business meeting or a large family gathering, you will for sure find back to that priceless inner calm you felt as a child when you were cloud gazing in a green field. Anything that can give such an effect must be considered a gift to the listener.
What a wonderful and remarkable album!!!
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Once in a while an artist puts forth a quality album and it reminds me of why I started listening to the genre in the first place. Michele Ippolito's new release In the Clouds is such a work. It is blending of electronic, New Age and a bit of ambient music and every song is deliciously thought provoking and peace rendering. From the first note to the last, the lightness of being is freed over and over again unfettering the spirit to reflect, relax and refresh.



In the tune Sunrising I could see the first rose-pink glow of the daystar and feel the simultaneous warmth. I knew that soon my day would be bathed in the light of life. Every second was fresh and the moment held possibilities. Michele's music is uplifting and bright as layer upon layer of darkness gives way to the sunlight hours.

Dreamstar is a very delicate song. The sighing of sound is ever so gently mixed with flowing waves of shimmering reverberation. It is as if the sonic vibrations stretch out a gossamer hand and I grasp it to be pulled along with the music. I feel the spirit floating away to an ephemeral destination that only a free spirit can know.

Horizon is one of my favorites on In The Clouds. It has whispering waves of sound in the music. Angel voices, almost imperceptible sing softly. The dominant voice of the flute lends a mellow, almost Celtic tone to an already beautiful, ambient foray along the boundaries of human perspective. Michele's music encourages me to look beyond the horizon, no matter how far, to see another side of my dreams.

Mixed with low vibrations Atmospheric is a rather heady tune with a surrealistic melody. As the music unfurled in the background I felt weightless, without the burden of corporal hindrances and I could feel the ascension of the soul up beyond my own imagination. Is this what it is like to be out of the body?

Celestial Voices is an eponymous tune that seems to drift on forever. It has an insubstantial quality that suggests voices floating up into the heavens and echoing until they reach the end of the universe. You may or may not believe in helpful celestial beings, but there you have it. Somehow, Michele has discovered what they sound like in a state of bliss and captured the feeling for all to enjoy.

Finally the title tune, In The Clouds, with its throaty sound and echoing melody closes the album. The tune centered on a familiar phrase and it calmed me without my putting too much thought into it. I just surrendered to the music and it rewarded me with tranquility. The music was layered in blue skies and white puffy clouds until it reached the upper atmosphere and then the stars were there waiting for me like old friends. The known constellations welcomed me with their pleasing configurations and fantastic anthologies.

The music of Michele Ippolito never fails to deliver peace. The eleven songs on the album flow into one another almost seamlessly. It is one continuous journey in the realms of quietude on a road paved with serene music. I recommend this album to all who love pure New Age and ambient music.
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Bill Binkelman New Age Reporter
Full Review
 
Michele Ippolito's debut recording, Mystic Moods, came seemingly out of nowhere in 2005 and garnered impressive reviews, including the following praise from me; "There is a rich emotional resonance permeating all the pieces on Mystic Moods despite the presence of so many overt electronic components in the music…Michele Ippolito’s debut CD is one of the best first efforts I have heard in years. It’s near impossible to believe that she is a newcomer." About the only knock on her first recording was its short length of thirty minutes. In The Clouds clocks in at twice that in duration and, like Mystic Moods, it's filled to the brim with soothing lush electronic soundscapes that wrap around the listener like a feather-light down comforter. This CD would make an ideal soundtrack for watching the sun set amongst a sea of clouds, the sky going from blue to gold to purple and eventually to smooth velvety darkness with pinpricks of stars dotting the inky black sky.

Some reviews mentioned a palpable and recognizable similarity to Liquid Mind's music present on Mystic Moods. On first listen to In The Clouds, one might be tempted to repeat that assertion, but just as I stated in my Mystic Moods review, there are plenty of subtle and even not so subtle differences coursing through Ippolito's music which distinguishes it from Chuck Wild's (Liquid Mind). In The Clouds actually hews closer to a blend of new age and classic spacemusic, while the Liquid Mind series has, in more recent years, featured a strong neo-classical element (more sampled orchestral instruments, such as solo woodwinds).

As far as comparisons go, the track "On Skylark's Wings" reminds me of Jon Mark's Asia Journey, owing not just to the synthesizers used but also a hint of Asian motifs via plucked strings. "Dreamstar," the next song on In The Clouds, brings to mind Robert Haig Coxon's The Inner Voyage with its soothing flowing melody played on a variety of keyboards and buoyed by haunting angelic chorals. There is also a hint of Llewellyn scattered in amongst some tracks, such as "Reflections," although the almost omnipresent abundance of chorals makes the comparison somewhat tenuous, I admit. Yet another comparison (which I pointed out in my Mystic Moods review) is with Larry Kucharz, but Ippolito takes much less of a minimalist approach than Kucharz does, preferring to keep the music flowing non-stop on each track.

Ippolito also introduces some new wrinkles on In The Clouds, such as the lilting flute on "Horizon" (this elicits yet another comparison, that being to English artist Mike Simmons, who frequently blended layers of keyboards with sampled wind instruments). "Celestial Voices," likewise, sounds "new" to me with delicate plucked harp joined by high pitched chorals and not as many other synthesizers in the mix as on other cuts.

The variety that becomes evident as one delves deeper into the CD is a sure sign that Ippolito is maturing and growing as an artist. While there can be little denying that In The Clouds is cut from the same cloth as Mystic Moods, that statement could be made about many artists in this genre (i.e. albums frequently contain an artist's musical "signature"). Still, when I listened on headphones, I was surprised by just how (a) "new" and (b) varied the music on this recording is. Obviously, if you play it in the background and very softly, you may not hear the same degree of change that I do.

The whole issue of "new" versus "the same" not withstanding, what In The Clouds does contain, with out a doubt, is a collection of peaceful calming electronic new age music pieces, a sixty-minute musical tonic for de-stressing from the insanity that most of our day-to-day lives have become. Michele Ippolito proves that she is no one-hit wonder with this strong and accomplished sophomore effort. Solidly recommended.
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