This album begins with the primeval sounds of didjeridoo and gentle electronic keyboards. You can sit down and simply relax. Your journey to your inner self starts… And it will be very exciting with Paradiso’s music.

Something shamanic and bewitching is present in his didjeridoo playing. And his music is very meditative. One can feel the voice of Mother Earth in the deep didjeridoo sounds. You can come back to your own primordial nature and feel your true essence. Maybe you will wonder how much you lost yourself in the present hectic world. But your own essence was with you all this time and it stays here for now. Feel it, be with it, it is so easy…

Paradiso is a master indeed. His didjeridoo playing is refined and the sound of “Middle Path” is perfect. Listen to this album and feel that the transformation time of our world is imminent. This world will be transformed but each human being must change oneself first...

Serge Kozlovsky
http://sergekozlovsky.com
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Paradiso, a sound healer and initiate of the sacred sound-current is presenting us with another gift of his musical inspiration. MIDDLE PATH is the follow up CD of his previous releases SHAMAN'S TRANCE and HEALING VIBES. In MIDDLE PATH Paradiso focuses on balancing energies on many different levels. The physical, spiritual and emotional levels. The music feels like an embrace of Heaven and Earth! Highly recommended.
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In many cases, when a didgeridoo is used as the principal or secondary instrument on a recording, this frequently dictates either an ethno-ambient or world fusion influence. However, now after earlier hearing Fiona Joy Hawkins’ Ice: Piano Slightly Chilled and now with Paradiso's Middle Path, I can throw that assumption out the window. Where Hawkins took the Australian aboriginal wind instrument and integrated it into contemporary chill-out, multi-instrumentalist Paradiso relegates it to a more textural/tonal role with barely a trace of the tribal or ethnic aspect. Yes, the "didge" here still "sounds like" it usually does, with its familiar bark, growl, and buzzing. However, the way the artist merges these sonic footprints amongst the assortment of electronic keyboards (which themselves vary from new age to ambient to spacemusic to electronica) is something which surprised me, which shouldn't since the CD cover states that the album is "Electronic Crossover with Didgeridoo." Well, I believe that statement now.

The eleven tracks (almost seventy minutes of music) each trek across a subtly (and sometimes pronounced) different musical landscape. Besides didgeridoo and keyboards, Paradiso also contributes on theremin, drums, Tibetan bowls and chants, the latter of which are heard on Glistening Sky, a song with a more overt EM sound combined with a midtempo percussive effect that is hard to describe. Angel of Chimes, which opens the album, employs the keyboards more as new age music "coloring," with patient Liquid Mind-like washes and pads over the background didge. Reverberating tones occasionally ring over the flowing synth lines. The SF-titled Winds of Mars opens with a haunting drone but evolves into a curious mixture of swirling spacemusic and muted trap kit drum snare/bass drum rhythms, eventually building into waves of retro analogue-sounding synths and twinkling tones, all the while with an undercurrent of buzzing and sparsely barking didge. From outer space, Paradiso takes the listener into deep blue waters on Ocean's Spirits, another foray into more "typical" electronic new age music, and featuring my old bugaboo, whale song. Oh well, as Paradiso uses it here, it's not too distracting amidst the didge, layers of shimmering synths and keyboard washes/pads. After that, it's into the deep woods on the arboreal Cry of the Crickets accented with wooden percussion, the titular nocturnal creatures, muted drum beats, and a serene sense of nighttime bliss. 

Of the remaining tracks, the one that comes the closest to sounding what "typical" didgeridoo music is the aptly titled Shaman's Flight owing to a lot more hand percussion and ethno-tribal beats, but even here the electronics are pronounced enough that you’re never going to mistake this for world fusion music. Dolphins Healing features the little sea critters lending their own voices now and then as well as the sparse application of Tibetan bowls. Transport is probably the most overt electronica piece on the CD, sometimes reminding me of Crown Invisible's music, owing to a shuffling chill-out beat at the outset. There's also a hint of Berlin school EM near the track's conclusion. 

Make no mistake, though. You will not enjoy Middle Path if you don’t like didgeridoo music. Just because the instrument doesn't step out and command center stage attention often doesn't mean you won't know it's there. However, Paradiso's ambient/new age electronic music is more than compelling and mesmerizing enough that the didge can be heard merely as a contributing factor to the overall musical motif, not defining it. As such, if ambient/spacemusic fans can look past the new age cover art, they’re liable to enjoy this as much as those for whom I imagine the artist intended it. I enjoyed exploring this relatively undiscovered aspect to the Australian instrument and I recommend the album.
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Middle Path, by Paradiso, is another rare gem. 2008 is only three months old but this CD stands out as the year’s best. Indeed, it will take a brilliant effort to surpass it. While Paradiso (*) guards his birth name closely, he does not make any effort to protect his mission. He is a Shaman and is crusading to enhance humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth. “We are at a time when Mother Earth is going through a transition. We are the granted souls who are witnessing the change through human eyes.”

This CD, while divided into 11 tracks, is actually one large soundscape with several subscapes. Paradiso’s sound design incorporates exotic instruments (didgeridoos, Tibetan bowls and a Theremin), simple chants, percussion and electronics. He uses simple drones as his base. He builds atmospheres from the drones. He surrounds the atmospheres with rhythms and airs to create deep introspective space music. 
Thus, musical greatness surrounds listeners and fills the environment with awareness and sensitivity. Deep listeners will be rapt as the music takes hold and guides them on a search for and of the soul — the soul of the essence of life! The resonance and overtones are powerful!

This CD is that brilliant as well. It is a collector’s dream — an ambient high — to find albums that have such an impact. It can be transformational in its own right.
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