THE UNIVERSAL PLAY

This one is rather different from the former albums of the great master Gandalf. Where the last one "Tale From A Long Forgotten Kingdom" is very melodic and nice to sink in to, this one is harder and takes more time to appreciate. The music is very floating, sometimes even minimalistic. It's comparable with Mike Oldfield's "The Songs Form Distant Earth". All tracks are based on a repeating melody with beatiful sounds that change or are added. This album is very electronic and is everything the cover seems to say: spacey! Very nice to put on your headphones and let the magician take you away into space! This is one of the stronger efforts IMO of master Gandalf. The new line he introduces here will be continued more or less on "From Source To Sea".

Personal favourite tracks are World Within and Ocean Of Time.

This album is among my ten favourites in electronic-progressive music. Oldfieldian Earthbound is beautiful. The worse track is Cosmic Circle Dance, that is too repetitive and sounds very artificial, but Ocean Of Time is a masterpiece: sounds and melodies are as an amazing picture of a moving ocean, fusing the clock sounds with the rythm of a moving ocean landscape. This very favourite track ends with the waves crashing upon the rocks, as an emotion of a charming percussion.

Gandalf, you are great!

While the best part of the previous Gandalf release 'Tale From A Long Forgotten Kingdom' still falls the same category as his earlier albums, starting with 'The Universal Play' Gandalf completly arrives to the second period of his musical carrier. This period (which lasts to the early '90s) consist of series of albums with music based on mostly electronic instruments rather than accustics.

'The Unversal Play' is still a concept album though; but now with longer mellow, meditative parts than before, especially in tracks like 'World Within' (5/10) and 'Ocean Of Time' (5/10). Fortunately this isn't true for the majority of the album. The opener 'Earthbound' (8/10) is a pretty nice ambient styled one with various great percussions. It's an interesting track and a different new sound ,one of my favorites. 'Cosmic Circle Dance' (5/10) is a rythmic one - what else would you expect from the title - a bit repetitive really but it fits here after the slowly floating second track.

The best moment of the album is definitely 'Gate To Infinity' (10/10) - the grand piano gets the lead role here and is simply a masterpiece; not only the highlight of this album, this song should be among the top 5 compostions of Gandalf's 30 year long musical carreer.

The last phase, 'Pure Love' (6/10) is an accustic guitar melody that finishes the album nicely.

This new period of Gandalf's starts well with this album - but later almost complete stuctures were reused from this material in the forthcoming 2-3 releases - which is a bit dissapointing.

Anyway, this is a nice production overall, sounds professional as always and gives a great listening experience. As I stated in my reviews of other Gandalf albums: newcomers to this artist should better start with albums like 'Visions' or 'Magic Theater' to get the the best impressions from the works of Austria's magician of sounds.

3,5 stars.

A giant leap for Gandalf - an insignificant step for mankind

With The Universal Play, Gandalf left (Middle-)Earth and ventured into deep space. This is an almost completely electronic affair in a style not dissimilar to those of Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. The sound is dominated by electronic sounds throughout, and though there is lots of grand piano, guitars can barely be heard at all. As such, this was a radical departure from Gandalf's earlier efforts. Together with Anthony Phillips, Gandalf is a rare example of an artist who can create both (nearly completely) acoustic works and (nearly completely) electronic works.

For me, the main problem here though is not the radical change of style, or indeed primarily the particular style chosen - even though I have to admit that electronic music is far from my favourite type of music. The problem lies elsewhere: it is the almost complete lack of melody. (I have a similar problem with much of Jarre's and Vangelis's works, though I do like some of it).

So, even though I can hear this music (in the background) without taking offence, I fail to find any listening value in it. It is not unpleasant on the ear, indeed it is sonically of high quality, but it is just unexciting and dull. This album will most probably appeal to fans of the likes of Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, and (Larry Fast's) Synergy, but it fails to leave any lasting impressions on me.