Some of you may remember like I do going to the occasional New Age/Witch/World stores of the 90s and early 2000s at the malls and hearing music that was more than just calming, ambient music in the broader New Age genre - it had what we can now identify as Roland D-50s and JDs and JVs and XVs and Korg M1s and Wavestations and Trinitys blowing all those synth bells and motions pads and percussive flutes and fake string samples that literally no one else in professional music was using anywhere and creating these dense fantasy worlds that evoked mental images of alien pyramids, flying dolphins, horizons with multiple moons and some other sci-fi shit mixing in with nature.

I hate admitting it outright, but I identify with that music the most and when I actually decided to start a music journey, that was the first type of music I wanted to do.

Now, 20+ fucking years later and I have all the Roland and Korg stuff they used and enough skill, I decide I want to finally do some of that music for real... but... I don't remember a lot of what there used to be for that kind of stuff. Right now in my search for it, I've got CUSCO (my primary inspiration all the way around), some Patrick O'hearn, Medwyn Goodall, some early David and Diane Arkenstone for that and there's even some of John Payne's songs with ASIA are also heavy ROMpler use that evoke that kind of fantasy new age thing. And that's it. I know there had to be a lot more of it, otherwise why would Roland and Korg and Kurzweil, et all, keep making synths and ROMplers with so much new age shit in it?

So that's where I ask here - do you guys know of or remember any ROMpler-heavy music like that? I want to study it more and it's hard to find just through Google alone. Bonus points if you can name off some albums or releases that had background music from ethnic/world documentaries and stuff in that era as well since that's the only other non-videogame avenue that was ROMpler heavy.

Thanks much.

 

https://www.discogs.com/label/13755-New-World-Music?sort=year&sort_order=asc

 

Dan Gibson's Solitude ~ Stream of Dreams 1

Pauline Anna Strom - The Unveiling

Dan Gibson's Solitude ~ Stream of Dreams 7

Grand Canyon: A Natural Wonder - Dan Gibson's Solitudes

Om Mani Padme Hum - Constance Demby

Andreas Vollenweider - White Winds - Side A (Vinyl)

David Parsons - Sounds of the Mothership (Side B)

 

KITARO

 

Funny story, I used to date a girl who was Wiccan, so I got dragged into quite a bit of those new age stores back in the day

With the exception of Enya, I'm not sure if any of these albums used romplers, although most of them have that ambient / new age vibe.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2023

Medwyn's work was everywhere in the 90's where I lived. I remember walking in to incense filled shops with his music playing and cassettes on sale.

Then there is Sacret Spirit....

 

WOW love me some newage stuff

little history : i started my new age music following michael cretu and frank peterson who started the Enigma first album
and anything with gregorian chants (that was my mood in1990-93 )
after that i started collecting all albums and similar projects like these wonderful groups (with mini review)

Schiller : play all his albums and you wont regret it ,i used to come back tired and angry from work and playing his albums would
reset me feelings back to normal calm and relaxed (and hungry for food and sex lol )

Gregorians : the Underrated first frank peterson project album as GREGORIAN 'so sad ' was awesome
and only they made one album (that before gregorians - Masters of Chants projects where they select popular tracks to cover)
until they made ''Moment of peace '' still one of the greatest new age song so far

Delirium : fantastic melodies awesome vocals/great beats and thats DELERIUM

ERA : AMENO song still rocking today and i cant get enough hearing amazing mixes on this song only )

Anhidema : fantastic Enigma inspired project with good use of melodies )

Aenigmatica : same as above but with Excellent use of Big Heavy Drums )

Akoviani : great piano +drums +asian style instruments )

Amure : amazing compositions from this russian dude who just like cretu love editing and pitching vocals to his composition

Anima Infinity : fantastic ambient /chillout/newage composition

Shinnobu : this group follow/inspire and even copy the style of enigma from certain albums... and to a better Use

Eguana & Qeight my new favorite Enigma style so far )i cant get enough of them,looking forward for next one

Joel Kanning : this guy worked with cretu and jens gad too so naturally he produce his own Enigma style songs (3 albums so far )

i also love the vocals of
ENYA : angelic vocal +great music + and barbique

sarah Brightman :i love sarah extending chords and frank peterson is one lucky SOB,her later albums are far better

Andru donalds : cretu brought this guy to his enigma 5th as one of the vocals ,then he produced 2 fantastic albums

Ruth_Ann :the singer of group olive participated in enigma 4 and eventually cretu made her freakin awesome alum called''what about us ''


guys if anyone want more groups/names/in enigma style as mp3s let me know ,i got you covered

 

Surprised not to see this ones yet..

 

I'm not an expert, but that's what I remember/could find from the era..

 

Enigma, late 80s and early 90s Mike Oldfield and David Vorhaus here really

 

also Henry Kawahara from JP...

 

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2023