Sailing the Solar Wind
Wind and Wire Review (February 2004)

Sometimes, a tragic event can have unexpected positive outcomes, as is the case for The Tunnel Singer, a.k.a. Lee Ellen Shoemaker. Her previous albums featured her dramatic "tunnel singing" as the main (if not only) source of melody, and what a stunning voice she has! Unfortunately, due to some medical problems, she has had to curtail her singing to a large degree.

As a result, when the time came to release a new album, she had to rethink a new direction for her music. And what a new direction she has taken!

Sailing the Solar Wind is an excellent recording, full of superb ethno-tribal ambient music and containing elements of spacemusic as well. Besides her (more subdued than before) vocals, there are electronics in abundance, all manner of percussion, and unique field recordings that are integrated into the music at various times in the albums.

I was immediately won over just a few minutes into the opening title track. Shoemaker¹s voice starts things off with some beautiful echoed wordless singing, but soon the song introduces sensuous tribal hand percussion as an undercurrent to her voice (the echo effect on her singing is wonderful).

The sound of massing crows lends the song an eerie feel, and it is so well-recorded that when I first heard them cawing, I thought it was a flock of them in my backyard!

Later, spacy textures and processing are applied to vocal snippets, as well as alien-sounding synth effects. The cut is over twelve minutes long and it¹s a deliciously lengthy trip, as other musical touches are brought into the picture (floating keyboards, darker drone-like tones, quasi-tribal vocal cries. There are five more tracks on the album (only two of which are under ten minutes long).

One of my favorites is "Enchanted Rain" which blends the sound of falling rain with mid-fast tempo hand drums and ethereal vocalizings; the song is ultra-evocative and sensuous in the best sense of the word (but then, Shoemaker¹s previous works always had a primal feel to them). "Enchanted Rain" also features more overt use of synthesizers, as they cascade up and down the scale, mirroring the falling rain.

More ethnic percussion is added and grows more prominent in the mix as the track develops. The rain itself is not static, as a crack of thunder sometimes erupts as well as the intensity of the rain itself changing during the piece.

"Desert Flower" is solid "desert ambience," full of music which evokes shimmering waves of heat rising from the desert floor (wavering drones and isolated percussive textures and assorted processed/echoed flutes, sounding just a tad like Robert Rich).

Again, as the cut evolves, the percussion takes center stage in the mix, this time being dominated by what sounds like water drums and/or tabla. The desert is not that of the American southwest, but is the lonely bareness of the Sahara, with miles and miles of dunes and caravans of nomads who somehow scratch an existence out in the cruel environment.

"Sea Caves" is yet another well-executed ethno-tribal/tribal ambient track, once again employing assorted hand percussion and fluid synths - drawing a comparison to Tuu or o yuki conjugate (minus any flutes). Pitch-bending keyboards (almost mellotron-like in sound) ebb and flow later in the track, then disappear, eventually replaced by didgeridoo swirlings.

The album is not without weaknesses, though. "Red Red," which probably seemed like a good idea, feels misplaced on the album. "Red Red" is closer to a combination of electronica and new age, owing to the quasi-technoish rhythms and the almost non-stop spoken word vocals (many times it¹s just Shoemaker uttering the word "red").

It¹s too bad it doesn¹t fit into the scheme of the album better, because the song itself is pretty cool. The synth work is top-notch, full of twinkling bell tones on top of that pulsing beat. But it¹s so mis-matched to the other songs here that I would have preferred the artist had just left it off.

"Raven Dance," the last song on the CD, suffers some of the same failing, but nowhere near as drastically, since it¹s essentially a fast-paced ambient-tribal piece, although featuring more electronica beats as the previous song.

My personal feeling about Sailing the Solar Wind is that the first four tracks are more than enough to qualify the album for a "highly recommended" rating.

Those four selections are just flat-out kick-ass ethno-tribal ambient musical numbers! If you¹re a fan of that subgenre, you should not be dissuaded by my criticisms of the last two cuts. There is nothing wrong with the last two; they only suffer by comparison to the excellence that comes before them.

While I¹m sorry for Lee Ellen Shoemaker¹s medical problems, and I hope for her healthy recovery and the resumption of her tunnel singing, what she found as a replacement until then is like finding the proverbial diamond in the rough.

And boy, does this diamond shine!

- Bill Binkelman -
WIND and WIRE
www.windandwire.com

Lee Ellen is possessed of a powerfully emotive voice. Combine that with the reverb effect and what you have is (as was the case with Jim Cole and Spectral Voices on their release, Coalescence) something almost transcendental in its effect on the listener.

I can't imagine listening to this as background music. It just begs to be immersed in. I'd wager listening to it on headphones (or, better yet, in the dark on a great speaker system) is a cathartic experience. I'm not gonna try to describe this or single out favorite songs.

Lee Ellen's singing should not be confused with Tibetan overtone or Tuvan throat singing (although it has elements of both at times). It is, instead, pure and crystalline and filtered only by the rich sonorous echoes of the cistern.

Okay, I said I wouldn't talk about individual cuts, but "Remembrance" is...my goodness, it is incredible! Those notes of Lee Ellen's just hang there, slowly evaporating and leaving behind these ripples of persistence that go on forever.

The mood of the music is, by turns, reverential, celebratory, and yet also serene and meditative. It's surprising how non-monotonous this is, when you realize it is just Lee Ellen and her wonderful voice. This is one of those rare recordings that I really want to spend time with. There is so much nuance and subtlety here that a casual listening will simply be inadequate.

Water Birth is music distilled to its essence, i.e., an artist and her talent, undiluted by any artifice. Without taking anything away from artists who use instrumentality or technology, the sheer wonder of this recording is a joy to behold. That the music on this CD is from a human voice alone, aided only by the physics of echo and reverb, is something very special.

- Bill Binkelman -