A few posts back, I mentioned the return of 'cassette culture', and this compilation from 2013 is drawn from new age albums that were initially released exclusively on cassette. I remember those days fondly. You'd buy a sampler or two, and the catalogs were usually decidedly not slick. And the performers were pretty quirky; you'd have to be to attempt music in a genre that hadn't really existed before. Some stayed true to their original vision (Iasos, Laraaji, Don Slepian, Aeoliah, Larkin -- going by a single name helps, I guess) while others I won't name took the New Age banner when it emerged and ran with it. There are a few people on this compilation that I'd swear have releases numbering in the hundreds, everything from 'music to align your chakras' to 'music for a stressful day'.
But it is fun to listen to these releases from the dawn of the whole "new age movement", just before things started to coalesce. It's interesting how a movement moves into the center; young people with dog-eared copies of "The Hobbit" start eating brown rice and consider Eastern mysticism, and now soccer moms are going to yoga classes and eating organic food. What once was the fringe is now the new normal for a lot of folks. So this collection is a fond look back to some quirky little pioneers.
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