Esoteric Rec.
Claire Hamill : Voices (US,1985,re.2008)***°/**'
While nowadays New Age still often is associated with a cheap-in-creativity music business marketing formula of kitschy synths massages mixed with stolen ethnic flavours and fill-ups of nature sounds, in the early days, the late 70s and early 80s, when the New Age was still in its primal form, you also had New Age guitar and New Age jazz for instance, attempts of new creative forms distilled from jazz, pop and even progressive (like Deuter,..). It didn’t take long before this challenge was filled in with the first easier listening projects. Thoroughly it became an easier filled up genre because the ethereal and rather minimal sounds were easily imitated by amateurs or business men who could hide themselves behind this form or who could abuse it easily to sell their stuff better than with just bad and cheap inspirations alone.
Claire Hamill rolled in ‘The New Age’ idea because of Rick Wakeman, with whom she just had toured as a support act, and who had just discovered the new commercial possibilities of the new genre, so he "encouraged" her to try something with her voice and record this. For Claire it began as an adventurous experiment, based upon thick multi-layered, ethereal and breathy vocal parts, and she felt she made something new and it was in fact also something unique. She used some typical 80s instruments, like a synthesiser from which more often was used a very vocal-alike sound, with a somewhat melancholy effect, consisting of what seemingly is harmonic package of breathy vocals, something which, of course fits perfectly with the recording of her own vocal harmonies, which she recorded with one of the new generation early digital sampling machines, a Prophet 2000. She used a bit of ethereal echo on the singing parts. We hear breathy harmonic layers and pop harmonies with a few soulful singing ideas. Sometimes the synthesizer adds a bit of bass sounds and percussion, keeping the higher toned vocals hanging close. At times we feel ourselves as if flying into a landscape of a sunset. With it, she intended to capture something of the changing seasons.
