Riley Lee - Wild Honey Dreaming

Now for something a bit zen.
While Riley Lee was born in the states he has made Australia
home for a long time now and made a huge contribution to
music in this country. A master of the shakuhachi (bamboo flute)
this album is something very special. Combined with didjeridu this is
spellbinding music, which evokes the Australian outback
in an amazing way.
I find the shakuhachi very ambient, an instrument which relaxes
you and clears your mind, mediative I suppose, if you find this
description in any way getting your interest levels up I'd
recommend you grab it
I'm sure I saw Riley play a few times back in the Maleny
folk festival days and he didn't disappoint.

RILEY LEE began playing the shakuhachi in
Japan in 1971, studying with Chikuho Sakai until 1980,
nd has been a student of Katsuya Yokoyama since 1984
He was given the rank of Dai Shihan (grand master) in 1980.
Riley was born in Plainview Texas USA in 1951, and moved to
Shawnee Oklahoma USA in 1957, where, aged 13,
he became the bass player of the award winning rock band
"The Workouts".
He and his family moved to Hawai'i in 1966.
He first went to Japan in 1970, and returned in 1971,
when he began his shakuhachi studies.
He lived there continuously until 1977.
He moved to Honolulu in 1978 where he began teaching
privately and performing and founded the Chikuho School
of Shakuhachi of Hawaii.
He was a lecturer of the shakuhachi at the University of
Hawaii until leaving for Australia in 1986 to take up a PhD
fellowship at the University of Sydney.
He has been instrumental in creating a professional presence
of traditional Japanese music in Australia.
He has introduced the shakuhachi to a diverse audience as
both a soloist and with other performers of such instruments
as harp, cello, saxophone, tabla, guitar, didjeridu,
and symphony orchestra. He helped found the Australian
Shakuhachi Society in 1996.
In 1995, he also co-founded with Ian Cleworth, Australia's
dynamic Japanese festival drum group, TaikOz.
It has since become one of Australia's premier performance
groups, He has made over fifty commercially released
recordings since 1980,which are sold worldwide
on a number of labels.

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Ambience - Various artists

This 1987 release was a project of the ambience radio show on JJJ, which
was on sunday nights. I never heard the show but liked the look of this
compilation which quickly became one of my favorites.
When the program was conceived in late 84 such music by Australian artists
was rare, a situation changed in part by artists on this Cd.
There are the artists that you'll be familiar with, such as Not Drowning Waving,
Steve Kilbey, Chris Abrahams and the wonderful Gondwanaland.
I plan to cover all these artists, however this really special Cd will serve as an
introduction.
If your wondering what this is like its very beautiful instrumental music, its
also very intelligent and very relaxing, I remember many years ago camped
at the Lamington national park camp site, playing this round sunset and
people coming up and asking what it was, being quite blowen away by this
music.
If anyone knows more about the artists, or the radio program please tell us
via the comments.

Track list
01 - Movement One (Beginnings) - Andrew Wilson.
02 - Ephemeral Lakes - Gondwanaland
03 - Orpheus - The Umbrellas
04 - Water drops - Not Drowning, Waving
05 - The Cheshire Cat - Not Drowning, Waving
06 - Bin Dancing - John Elder
07 - Twirly- Bird - Michael Atherton
08 - CFD - Chris Abrahams
09 - A sad Little Piano Piece - Steve Kilbey
10 - Napoleon's Army, Christmas Eve, Outside Moscow - Steve Kilbey

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