Gaea Star Crystal Radio Hour #186

10-22-15   Gaea Star Crystal Radio Hour #186 celebrates autumn with a lovely cycle of songs and improvisations recorded at Singing Bridge Studio in Worthington, Massachusetts and featuring Mariam Massaro on vocals, ukelele, acoustic guitar and native flute, Craig Harris on congas and marimba and Robert Sherwood on piano.  Mariam’s lovely, contemplative “Oh Glorious Fall” starts off the hour with a hypnotic autumn-centric conversation between Mariam’s vocal and her native flute, atop a slowly varying groove from Craig and Bob.  Drifting into Mariam’s “All It Takes Is Love”, we pick up the pace for an uplifting folk rock song about a dog and a human rescuing each other.  “Being Grateful” is a simple, pretty song with a generous spirit embodied by an aching piano ostinato and “Hurricane” is lush and unsettled, a stormy paean to the gathering of Earth’s energies that features and builds upon a dreamy baritone ukelele figure from Mariam.  True to its subject, “Hurricane” escalates into a tense and bittersweet piano coda that wrings variation upon variation from the close, austere ukelele chords.  Following the break is Mariam’s mysterious “Fulak Ginseng”, an eastern tale set to a series of rich, modal figures that flow through corridors of echo above a driving groove from Craig’s congas.  “Singing Owl Part 2” comes in with Mariam’s native flute and Craig’s marimba setting setting the scene of a vast forest with Bob’s delay-laden piano forming the cloud-covered, distant mountains.   Purely instrumental, the piece is approached as a movie soundtrack.