Shabda : शब्द

Celestial’s first album, Spirit House, is an engaging blend of styles and sounds. Peter Millward is the group’s mastermind, writing most of the songs and thereby developing a signature sound which draws from a variety of sources, from contemporary worldbeat, pop and new age music to Vietnamese and Chinese folk. There’s nothing overtly challenging on the album. Instead, it’s an inviting set of worldbeat fusion deisgned to stimulate emotions, not the mind. And, according to that criterion, it works very well indeed.

Celestial – Spirit House

Spirit House draws on many diverse influences – Chinese, Vietnamese and Nepalese folk melodies, the sounds of Asian Orchestras and the rhythms of metropolitan dance floors. Drawing on the talents of musicians such as Hsin Hsiao Hung, Hong Kong’s #1 Erhu (Chinese violin) player, Nepalese classical trio Sur Sudha, and world renowned jazz guitarist Eugene Pao, to name but a few, the music is a collage of many different styles: a sampled `70′s funk groove loops beneath a timeless Erhu folk melody underscored by modern digital synth architecture; a 1930′s Shanghai song segues into a Kathmandu Raga; sampled voice bytes from news broadcasts compete with dialogue from 1940′s movies and a floating jazz guitar, an Irish folk melody is played on a traditional Chinese Zheng, with `80′s analog synths and dub echo effects bubbling underneath; sound effects of trains, helicopters, bicycles, people on the move, fade in and out of the ever present hypnotic, trance like rhythms…

Track listing:

• 01. Vietnam 01:27
• 02. Cang ding 04:50
• 03. Carrickfergus 04:30
• 04. I feel strange 05:43
• 05. The last gong before sailing 04:15
• 06. Life’s greatest tragedy 02:30
• 07. Bio-gravity 05:23
• 08. When will my love return 04:47
• 09. Nepal 03:24
• 10. An bradan feasa 04:00
• 11. Trans-Mongolian express 04:30
• 12. I can feel it 02:51

Bitrate: 320 kbps. size 110 mb

Download Celestial – Spirit House

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Listen track Celestial – Carrickfergus

Chot Kit Yee (zheng); Nelson Hiu, Prem Rana (flute); Dave Packer (harmonica); Surendra Shrestha (tabla); Ricky Johnson (congas). Engineers include: Shelly Bayman. Celestial includes: Rita Tsang, Ben Wong (vocals); Elizabeth Ko (spoken vocals); Eugene Pao (guitar); Bijaya Vaidya (sitar); Hsin Hsiao Hung (erhu);