Minimalism is a rare art, and a genius like German New Age composer and flautist Deuter makes it look easy. Consider this the sign of a pure soul, one that can dissolve into the sound it makes and speak for the night and the moon like an interpreter. With just warmth and beauty as his textures, Deuter’s music is as inviting as a warm pair of clean socks after shoveling the snow. He melts time to a standstill then paints with the dripping light from the frozen setting sun. East of the Full Moon is an instrumental work that enhances nearly every occasion that could benefit from intimacy, emotional tenderness, vulnerability, and the need of tears long repressed by the needs of the day. The space where this music plays is safe by its playing.
Dämmerschein” starts on some gentle piano notes, gradually opening up to synthesizer waves that glimmer over low piano notes that boom under the waves. Chimes tinkle as a synth voice echoes and Deuter’s flute comes down in a hawk’s widening gyre, a single note extended outward in slow, widening spirals. As beautiful as these peaks of angelic light are, the minimalist piano moments resonate strongest, as in the gentle high notes tapping out through “Marfa Lights II,” the angelic voices of “Black Velvet Flirt,” or the open-ended move into the soft, soul-shuddering melodics of “Moon-Silvered Clouds.
As Deuter writes in the liner notes, East of the Full Moon is meant “to reflect the moods of the night˜its silence, its soft songs˜when the human mind has gone to sleep to dream different dreams.” Listen to this album and feel the gratitude for the day you’re letting go of and the night you’re soon to embrace, the deep sadness as his minor key melodies ride into bliss and you hold on and surrender. All that you are losing in the setting sun will be returned in every star if you can ride Deuter’s music close enough to look. Such deep stargazing needs dark as much as light, and the patience to fill in the space a minimalist leaves open with your own pure soul and all-seeing heart.
Daily OM
