Cheryl Gunn
The Sun at Midnight
Earthtone
Standing amidst books on natural medicines, overpriced pieces of crystal, decorative mini waterfalls, and five hundred scents of incense, one begins to get the feeling that there’s a strange parallel between obsessive nature shops and psychic paraphernalia stores. Next to the wind chimes and tarot cards would conceivably lie a collection of CDs that just so perfectly capture the mood stores like these emanate. Cheryl Gunn, whether she likes it or not, has put together one of these albums.
A mix between nature music, Enya, and light contemporary jazz, The Sun at Midnight is certainly a relaxing piece of work. The long-winded flute winds its way through the layers of keyboards and light drum machines, doing all it possibly can to put the listener into some kind of transient daydream. All kinds of instruments make their appearance on the album, be it a classical guitar, a saxophone, viola, or cello – each contributing to this strange concoction of juxtaposed prominent background music. The occasional creepy whisper or buried vocal comes through, but the majority of the album is comprised completely of sleepy, melodic, well-layered natural earthy hybrid. Cheryl Gunn is everything you’d expect to come out of a hippie nature store’s music collection – just without the chirping birds.
Earthtone Records, P.O. Box 691626, West Hollywood, CA 90069; http://www.earthtone.com
