Album Notes

When the Robert Minden Ensemble burst upon the music scene in the late 1980s they were heralded for their inventive use of lost sounds coaxed from abandoned stuff and invented instruments. A beautifully produced recording with an extraordinary dynamic range Long Journey Home offers an evocative exploration of the acoustic landscape overflowing with the sounds of waterphones, bowed saws, blown glass bottles all arranged with uncanny intonation.

"Oil Over Water" composed after the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska eerily predates todays environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and listen especially to "Alone Together," a timely hymn for the planet composed on the longest day of the year with lyrics by Carla Hallett accompanied by plucked strings, blown glass bottles, struck glass jugs and milk bottles, vacuum cleaner hose vocals and waterphone.


"An atmospheric New Age recording with a liveliness and intelligence that will make you sit up and take notice."
(Joseph Blake, Times-Colonist, Victoria, BC Canada 1993)