Notes & Personnel Info |  | Chronicling a concert performed by four musicians signed to the new age label Gemini Sun Records, Live! is in essence a label sampler. Guitarist David Arkenstone, pianist Loren Gold, flutist Nicholas Gunn, and guitarist Johannes Linstead each gets a short set of songs previously heard on Gemini Sun studio albums, introduced by Gunn, who is the company president/CEO. As new age music goes, the material leans heavily toward world music, with the rhythms and playing styles jumping around the planet from the Middle East to the Caribbean to the Mediterranean to Africa. The playing is varied and lively, making for a good show. That show is presented both in video form on a DVD and audio form as a CD, and the two are identical, which creates a listening irritation on the CD, since the music is consistently overridden by brief explanatory remarks by the musicians, which may be acceptable in a video, but is obnoxious on a CD, particularly when the self-promoting Gunn is talking. He boastfully describes his own composition "Elves' Chasm" as "beautiful" and "gorgeous," surely characterizations that ought to be left to the listener. The talking should have been excised from the CD; it mars the listening experience. But then, given the promotional nature of the package, this is really a set that ought to be given away as a marketing item, not sold. ~ William Ruhlmann |
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