Lisa Gerrard & Jeff Rona
A Thousand Roads O.S.T.

THE REVIEW

Lisa Gerrard is a healer and has now embarked on the path of ethnographic discovery, the wonder that lies in the sounds of the peoples of the earth.

I admit I was enchanted after seeing her live, with Brendan Perry, at the D.C.D concert in March: A flesh-and-blood Galadriel with such a powerful and hypnotic voice that made you forget the queue at the box office, the hair of the girl sitting in front (obscurantism) and the constant movements of the spectators.

In this splendid album, soundtrack of a documentary by Chris Eyre, our Elf Queen and the American composer Jeff Rona offer us a journey among Native Americans, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, accompanied by the atmospheres and instruments that intertwine and change along the way; percussion changes, flutes expand the atmospheres suggesting the sound of the Andean wind, the cold or warmth of the native lands are inferred by savoring these small/great differences.

Music to heal, to let oneself be cradled by the balm of its ethnic/ambient progressions, but light-years away from the ease with which albums dedicated to America's indigenous peoples are produced today.
The work closes with a triptych of original tracks from which the authors drew inspiration: a long song for flute only "Shaman’s Call," the famous female chant "Mahk Giti," here free from heavy new age sighs, and the warrior spoken word "Crazy Horse."
Unfortunately, an import-only album.