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Indian Dream – Soundtrack/Relaxation Music

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Music designed to transport your mind to a calm inner space of self-reflection and receptivity.

Composed by Herrin.

Fire Organ – HubbubMusic Pirate Ship

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Pyrophone Pirate Ship

I have the good fortune of living in Maleny on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. On first glance it looks like Hippie land and I guess it kind of is, but it’s also host to some very creative and vibrant people.

One of which is the creator of this amazing Pirate Ship you see here. His name is Steve Langton and he is an inventor and musician.

More about him here: http://hubbubmusic.org

What the hell is this thing you ask? Imagine a church organ mounted on a ship (based on a flatbed truck!) that has LPG Gas that is lit, fired into the pipes making an ungodly note while crazy percussionists hit huge thundering drums.

See the Quicktime Panorama below for a more immersive picture.

Use your mouse to pan around and Control and Shift (on Mac ) to zoom in and out.

Natural Mandala Photography Art Slideshow with Relaxation Soundtrack

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This 10 minute photographic artwork slideshow presents the vision and unique eye of photographer and father, Errol Larkan, set to music created by his two sons, Herrin and Jai. A true family collaboration.

Remember you can watch this video fullscreen and in HD If you have a fast enough broadband.

The soundtrack in this video is from the Yoga music album, “Embrace The Moment”. You can download the music right here.

Friends – Love and Friendship Cross All Barriers – Music Video

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All living things respond to and desire to be loved and feel connection with others, whether we admit it or not.

The song is called “Friends” by Murray Wall. To download his music click here.

Embrace The Moment – Album Review – Yoga Relaxation Music

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This is ambient music at its best. Original and fresh with a world music ﬂavour, there’s not a single hint of cheesy cliché or overdone production here, pitfalls that can be rampant in this genre of music.

Embrace the Moment comprises six instrumental tracks that ebb and ﬂow to a full 80 minutes of blissed-out sound.

Its subtlety and seamlessness make it ideal for yoga and other practices that require a certain level of groundedness and concentration. It ambles along inconspicuously in the background, gentle, calming, and uplifting, without being distracting.

While the album was created to enhance any yogic or therapeutic practice, you don’t have to be into yoga for it to appeal. It works equally well as an album of super chilled-out sounds that bring a relaxed vibe to any activity.

Play it while you write, create a work of art, hang out in the garden, cook dinner, do your tax or have a luscious massage — whatever the experience, it will deﬁnitely be enriched with this music as an accompaniment.

The masterminds behind the music are multi-talented Australian brothers Herrin and Jai Larkan, both successful musicians in their own right, who teamed up to write, perform and produce the album. They invited Chris Lane from Aussie band OKA to add gorgeous ﬂute solos, a smart move, as the ﬂute really adds a certain magic to Herrin’s and Jai’s subtle vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion, piano, keyboards and programming.

The interesting thing about this music is that it feels completely timeless and is highly accessible without sounding commercial. It transcends culture, sub-culture, language and age, so you could safely buy it for your partner, mum, grandma or second cousin twice removed and be guaranteed they’ll love it, because there’s simply nothing not to love about it.

Embrace the Moment has a kind of poetic beauty about it that seeps into your being without you noticing. Before you know it, 80 minutes is up and you’re pressing the play button again. And again…

Overall, it’s a nurturing sound journey grown out of a wonderful synergy between three highly accomplished musicians who obviously have a deep understanding of how to use light, shade and space to bring an enduring and captivating quality to their stunning musical arrangements.

Review by Leigh Robshaw

Embrace the Moment - Music for Yoga and Relaxation (DL)

Lush Textural Instrumental World Music to Enhance Yoga or Relaxation (Total time:80min) - Acoustic guitars, broad atmospheric keyboards and piano, and soaring expressive flutes and saxes make for a truly original instrumental album.
Download Mp3 Album Sampler (7MB)

$16.00

What happens when 3 master musicians get together to design an album especially for Yoga?

Embrace The Moment – 80 minutes of lush instrumental world music designed to guide you from gentle building warmups, through the inner fire of sun salutes and spinal twists and ending with peace inducing savasana and meditation.

Any serious (or not) Yoga Practitioner or Massage Therapist will find this album an invaluable addition to their music collection.

Herrin – Producer/Engineer, Slide Acoustic Guitar, Subtle Vocals, Programming.

Jai Larkan – Piano, Keyboards, Earth Beats Programming.

Chris Lane (from OKA) – Flutes. Lush amazing flutes!

Album Review – Didgera – Atmospheric Australian World Music

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By Leigh Robshaw

Didgera are a couple of groovers from the land Down Under who create awesome electronic and acoustic world music with a uniquely Australian flavour.

On this, their self-titled album, they’ve managed to capture the essence of the ‘wide brown land’ through a series of panoramic soundscapes that take you on a kaleidoscopic aural journey through stark landscapes, steamy jungles, expansive coastlines and deep into the ancient sacred earth.

Didgera’s deep grooves can at times sound as tribal and earthy as the expansive red Australian desert, rattling your bones with rhythmic intensity. Other times the music travels to a jazzier tune, with a dancey world music vibe that would be totally at home in a funky beach bar in Spain. If you love the Ibiza-born Cafe del Mar compilations, or the similarly chilled sounds of Buddha Bar and Trance Planet, you’ll have Didgera playing on high rotation after just one listen.

These guys are masters of mood creation, able to conjure up dreamlike worlds within worlds amidst swirls of effervescent sound with just the two of them and their swag of instruments. Dave Johnson plays didgeridoo, sax, midi sax, percussion and keyboards, and Zane Savage plays keyboards and didgeridoo. Together they’ve got the whole world music, chillout sound well and truly sorted.

While it’s the Australian landscape that provides the prime inspiration here, we also get spicy little sound bites from Africa, the Middle East and the Orient thrown into the mix, making for a truly soul-nourishing global musical feast.

The album comprises seven tracks totaling 64 minutes, a few of them hovering around the 12-minute mark. Relaxing and hypnotic, upbeat and energetic, Didgera’s music will float and spark around you like a multicoloured aura, enhancing any space with vibrant, mesmerising sound.

Website: http://www.didgera.net
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/didgera

“Performer , teacher, composer and recording artist, Dave Johnson is a multi-instrumentalist since age 10, bringing his passion for music alive on the street or stage in a versatile performance.”

Didgera - Australian World Music (DL)

Progressive earth world music for chill-out and dance - Combines didgeridoo, sax, keyboard atmospheres and percussion. Inspired by the beauty and space of the Australian landscape. Download Mp3 Album Sampler (4MB)

$16.00

Music inspired by the expansive landscape of Australia. Dave Johnson and Zane Savage team up to share their traveling experience in musical form. Didgeridoo, Keyboards, Piano, Saxophone (MIDI and real) and Sound FX make for a diverse Chill/Dance journey.

Lively, carefully crafted world music, inspired by the beauty of Australia.

Dave Johnson on Sax, Keys, Programming and Percussion, with Zane Savage on Didgeridoo, Keys and Electric Pianos.

This is an instrumental experimental ride of musical textures that will entrance you, relax you and invite you into the inner reaches of atmospheric earth based world music.

The river of sound just keeps moving through many unchartered landscapes. These 2 guys have a diverse background that unites with the love of percussion and earth tones counter balanced by the atmosphere of broad keyboards and lush pads.

Voyage To Saturn – Carolyn Porco at Ted.com

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In this 17 minute talk, Carolyn Porco, leader of the Imaging Team on the NASA Cassini Mission, takes us on a beautiful visual journey to the great rings of Saturn and its moons. The talk is conducted at TED, March 2007.

This talk mainly focuses on Saturn, its largest moon, Titan, and on frozen Enceladus, and some of its peculiarities.

Relaxing Nature Scenes from India – Relaxation Music Video

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Jay over at RipFilms has been tinkering away on some new relaxing movies and here is the first of two we are collaborating on. Check out more at his YouTube Channel right here.

The scenes are from India and fit beautifully with the relaxing Piano music from the album Lunar Khandro. Download the album right here.

Album Review – Just In Time – Herrin

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Album Review by Leigh Robshaw

Download the MP3 Album Sampler

Herrinʼs Just in Time is an album of rich emotional complexity, lyrical ingenuity and musical integrity. He is a multi-instrumentalist, talented vocalist and an insightful songwriter and storyteller. He shares a generous amount of himself on the albumʼs 13 tracks, created seemingly as much to satiate his own artistic sensibilities as to entertain and engage the listener – a rare combination.
Its earthy and soulful sound spans myriad styles from folk to rock, with inﬂections of jazz, funk, world and Latin. He is an acute observer of life and his take on it is original, sometimes provocative and always very real. There is no pretense here, just raw emotion, a refreshing honesty and a bunch of catchy, meaningful tunes.

This is a musician who lays his soul bare for his art, resulting in a deeply intimate album that is at times moving and sad, as well as energising and inspiring. Herrin sings of love, friendship, relationship with self and others, nature and politics, within a lyrically-colourful canvas that blends velvety, powerful vocals with spoken word and poetry.

Herrin is obviously a can-do guy. Not content to write, sing and play guitars, bass, keyboards and drums, he has also mixed, mastered and produced the album and it has paid off, producing a holistic, integrated sound that do the songs great justice.

Standout tracks are the opener, Godʼs Cafe, a smooth and jazzy ballad with classy piano accompaniment by Zane Savage; the stunning, almost cinematic instrumental piece Arc of Rain; Oh World, an acoustic rock track that builds to a crescendo, with backing vocals by Simone Townsend; the gut-wrenching ballad Another Way, which highlights Herrinʼs vocal range and emotional dexterity; the epic Just in Time (parts 1 and 2), building from a soft intro to a passionate ﬁnish; and Anymore, a tear-jerker that exudes sensitivity.

Just in Time is a thought-provoking album that commands your full attention and feeds you its messages of love, loss, hope and pain almost intravenously. It is also a soothing soundscape to have playing in the background to add an evocative mood to your day or evening. It takes more than one listen to grasp its fullness, so make sure you spare some time to just sit back and let it sweep over you so as to appreciate all it has to offer.

Just In Time - Herrin (DL)

Emotive Acoustic Rock Pop - Clean heartfelt vocals, smooth rock/jazz production and some help from some very accomplished musicians. 13 songs from Herrin. Download MP3 Album Sampler (7MB)

$16.00

Mature, heartfelt, atmospheric rock with a dash of latin and jazz.

Herrin’s clean but strong vocals drive this evocative album, inspired by the likes of Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, Daniel Lanois, and Crowded House, with a strong emphasis on lyrics.

Rarely does an album come along that makes you feel so deeply. ‘Just in Time‘ is such an album and will continue to touch people with its emotional honesty and deep questions.

Clean heartfelt vocals, smooth rock/jazz production and some help from some very accomplished musicians. Just in Time is a tour of the inner landscape of love, hope, and at times, a cry for our collective sanity in how we treat our world.

The Matter With Dark Matter

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Every time a new discovery is made about the universe, it opens up a new box of unanswered questions. One of these boxes is marked dark energy/dark matter.

Whenever we look up at the universe at night everything we see, that is all the protons, neutrons and electrons, make up for only 4% of the mass and energy of the Universe.
The rest is the dark and mysterious stuff known as dark energy (70%) and dark matter (26%).

Scientists know that dark matter acts like regular matter when it comes to gravity but it doesn’t release light which makes it very different to what makes up the stars and planets that do their celestial dance about us.

One way they are trying to learn more about dark matter is by studying clusters of galaxies, in fact it was galaxies that gave us the first evidence that dark matter existed.

Because galaxy clusters move around so quickly there has to be a lot of matter to hold them together with their gravity. Most of the normal matter is hot gas but there is not nearly enough mass in this hot gas to hold all the normal matter together and that’s where invisible, dark matter comes into the equation.

To study some of the interesting properties of dark matter like whether it interacts with itself, the study of galaxy clusters violently colliding with other galaxy clusters has shown that dark matter can been wrenched free of normal matter which is something that doesn’t generally happen in the universe.

Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in all of physics

Studying clusters of galaxies is a good way of estimating how much matter there is in the universe and this helps to work out how much dark energy there is.

Another way to look at dark energy is to look at how galaxy clusters grow with time.

It seems that galaxies haven’t grown much over the last 6 or 7 billion years and it could be that dark energy is limiting the growth of these objects.

So if it is so that we only know about 4% of the macrocosm, I wonder if the same applies for the microcosm?
Is their dark matter, dark energy that goes into the making of our own internal universes?
What holds all the molecules and atoms that go into making the structure of our bodies together?
Is it another form of dark matter or dark energy?
If there is how would we know, what would it do if we found out and does it really matter anyway?

All of these questions I am going to mumble over as I toss back a pint or two at my local and let the universe get on with its merry way, revealing its mysterious workings in its own good time which by our standards is too bloody long anyway to really make much difference to we, who are mere blinks in the existence of creation.

Cheers,
Clip Tycles

(the information for this article has been shamelessly collected and reassembled from an article titled “The Universe Darkly” by Megan Watzke from the Chandra website)

Read about Dark Matter at Wikipedia

Dark Matter 3D Map

Featured Album: Phonic Bloom

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Innovative Electro Sax music in the tradition of Mike Oldfield and Jean Michael Jarre.

Steve McLeish is a multi-instrumentalist who merges percussion, guitar, saxophone, didgeridoo and electronics to create a hypnotic landscape of sounds, like color on canvas.

Phonic Bloom - Steve McLeish (DL)

Energetic Electro World Music - Steve McLeish has been playing percussion (Body and Skins) as well as MIDI and real saxophone for 15 years. He is an innovative and creative force that creates a very distinctive musical texture with this work. Download Mp3 Album Sampler

$14.00

Steve McLeish is a multi-instrumentalist who merges percussion, guitar, saxophone, didgeridoo and electronics to create a hypnotic landscape of sounds, like color on canvas.

He uses loop stations and Midi Saxophone with big keyboards and beats to create a truly unique sonic landscape.

His music creates a distinctive tone and setting that will transport you into the world in which sound becomes like fractals and geometric patterns.

Digital download means instant delivery!

Australian World Music – Didgera – Coorabin Landscape Slideshow

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Music inspired by the beauty of the Australian landscape.

This 5 minute track sampler shows off some fantastic land formations in Australia while you listen to the song “Coorabin” from the self-titled album by Didgera. http://didgera.net

“Performer , teacher, composer and recording artist, Dave Johnson is a multi-instrumentalist since age 10, bringing his passion for music alive on the street or stage in a versatile performance.”

Dave Johnson - Didgeridoo, Sax, Midi Sax, Percussion and Keyboards.

Zane Savage – Keyboards, Didgeridoo.

Buy The Album and Download MP3 samplers

Didgera - Australian World Music (DL)

$16.00

Lively, carefully crafted world music, inspired by the beauty of Australia.

Dave Johnson on Sax, Keys, Programming and Percussion, with Zane Savage on Didgeridoo, Keys and Electric Pianos.

This is an instrumental experimental ride of musical textures that will entrance you, relax you and invite you into the inner reaches of atmospheric earth based world music.

Artist Profile – Blossomhead a.k.a Greg Reid – Songwriter and Producer

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Blossomhead – aka Greg Reid

Albums : Dream Beautiful

Website : www.blossomhead.com

Instruments: Vocals, Guitar and Keyboards.

Skills : Writing, Lyrics, Songwriting, Media and Video Production, Art Direction and CD Artwork.Description:

Greg Reid has been living in Australia for 35 years since moving here from Papua New Guinea where he was born.

He worked in various jobs until around the age of 25 then he followed his love of theater and drama by touring a puppet show across the land. Unleashing the inner eccentric within and bringing joy to children and all was his main aim in life.

Over the last 15 years a genetic defect has created a disease called Ankylosing Spondilits that causes bones to fuse and a great deal of swelling and he is now wheelchair bound. In addition he has won a battle with Leukaemia and has been in remission for the last 4 years.

Despite this great challenge he moved on to become a wonderful songwriter, father of 2 awesome (and also eccentric) children, Galen and Sammalen and now with the release of this new album “Dream Beautiful” he is a published songwriter and singer.

Survivor – Father – Songwriter

Random Video Clip

Blog Feed

(This shows the latest content from the artists website)

[rsspara:http://feeds.feedburner.com/Blossomhead]

Visionary Art by Nicole Mizoguchi – Slideshow II – Sci-fi Soundtrack

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Art that takes you into space.

Nicole Mizoguchi’s visionary artwork presented with Hubble inspired soundtrack music.

http://www.nicolemiz.com – A truly breathtaking art form born of the traveling soul. An afro-american woman living in Japan that travels to other planets like Jodie Foster in “Contact” and returns with holiday pics in the form of pastel impressionistic visions.

Soundtrack from the album “Where To Land?” Click here to learn more.

Water On Mars and other Heavenly Delights

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In 1938 Orson Welles scared the crap out of America when he broadcast H.G.Wells “War Of The Worlds”, sparking a mass panic of fearful proportions amongst the more superstitious and imaginative part of the American population.

People were driving around in their rickety old trucks with their shotguns and pitchforks just looking for a damn commie martian from the red planet to skewer in order to protect freedom and liberty for all (except the martians of course).

Soundtrack to the article ? ~ Kit Cotter performs “Omniverse” Omniverse.mp3

Although a bit smaller than earth, Mars has often been described as a twin to our beautiful blue planet and has inspired the imagination of science fiction writers and artists for more than a century.Many had hoped that there were civilizations living on our neighboring planet but when the Mariner 4 probe was finally sent to the red planet in 1964, these hopes of fantasy were dashed forever.
Instead of finding civilizations living in peace and harmony amongst tree lined lakes and rivers of tranquility, a desolate, wind swept planet containing the largest volcano in the solar system greeted us.
Although life was not found it was believed that life did once exist upon the fourth planet from the sun and so the search for water was instigated.

Now water has been found on Mars by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.

Finding water is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires water. Now scientists can study the chemistry of Martian dirt in more detail.

When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.
Phoenix’s robotic arm first revealed the crumbs about 5 cm deep in the trench called “Dodo-Goldilocks” on June 15.
By June 19, they had vanished.
If the crumbs had been salt, they wouldn’t have disappeared, scientists said, and if the ice had been made of carbon dioxide, they wouldn’t have vaporized.

The $420 million mission landed on the arctic plains of Mars on May 25th 2008, embarking on a quest of at least four months to search for signs that the environment was once habitable to life.
Finding ice on Mars isn’t completely shocking, since observations from past satellites sent to orbit the planet, such as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, have indicated that ice is likely to lie beneath the planet’s surface.

Although the 2001 Mars Odyssey satellite could measure the average water ice content in roughly the top meter of ground over areas of several hundred kilometers, these data didn’t reveal how that ice was spread out.
The form of the water isn’t known, beyond the fact that there is too much there to be explained solely by water bound in minerals.

Mission scientists plan to eventually put samples of ice into Phoenix’s oven instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which is designed to bake Martian dirt and analyze the vapors it emits to detect its composition. They also plan to use the onboard Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument, a wet chemistry lab that measures levels of acidity, minerals, and conductivity in dirt samples.

So now that water has been found on Mars, does this explain the huge canyons that snake across the surface of the planet?
Did they once contain vast amounts water? If so what happened to it all?
I asked a friend of mine who told me of some people who subscribe to the belief about a rogue planet called Nibiru.

This planet travels into our solar system every 3600 years or so and creates havoc and mayhem and was the cause for Mars being the desolate planet it is now.
Apparently the atmosphere of Mars was ripped away by the gravitational pull of Nibiru as it passed by on its last visit.
It was discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians who gave it the name Nibiru and was apparently also known by the Mayans.

Sounds plausible if the planet exists and my sources inside NASA tell me “no comment”.
Does this mean “yes it is true but we’re not going to tell you, you loser” does it mean “we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t, say anything” or is it simply a case of “don’t waste our time with conspiracy theories we are men of science not science fiction you nut”.

I must pause here for a moment and remind all our readers that it is too easy to let ones imagination run away with itself, cackling madly over the hills and valleys of ones mind as happened in 1938.
The existence of Nibiru is hearsay as I haven’t seen any of the pictures but I am not beneath sensationalizing my articles to make them more interesting.

The fact remains however that some of what was once thought science fiction is now viewed in the realms of reality, indicating that anything is possible just like the water that has been found on Mars.
Maybe someday my children’s children’s, great grandchildren will be able to hitch a ride to Mars and catch some awesome waves on the fourth planet from the sun and maybe I should leave you all alone for now to contemplate the reality of a multidimensional navel.

So from the planet of my imagination, this is Clip Tycles signing off for now and catching the next bus for Mars.

Some Cool Links.

Excellent interactive and video journey on MSNBC.com showing the Mars rovers mission.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25954096/

Revolutionary Space Exploration Concepts

http://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/home/chien/spAGU2006Images.html

NASA Animation and article – Peeling Back Layers of a Martian Polar Ice Cap

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/sharad-20080515.html