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about this album
Earth Mantra welcomes symphonic ambient composer Douglas JP Lee to our list of artists, with his sublime two-disc ambient epic entitled Tabernacle, a collection of three longform ambient pieces of great beauty and inspiration. We have listened to work from Lily Pond Orchestra in the past and enjoyed his refreshingly musical approach to ambient composition. But we were not prepared for what we heard the first time we listened to Tabernacle. The music retains all of Douglas's trademark compositional eloquence and maturity, but is also combined with very smooth and tasty sound design, presented in a highly polished and sweetly recorded production. We were blown away. Thematically, Tabernacle covers topics as diverse as Gnostic parables, overcoming adversity, the illusions of daily life, impermanence, consensual reality, reverence, and the need people have to "believe that love, peace, and happiness exist hidden somewhere beyond them", all reflecting various aspects of the artist's philosophy. Douglas reports that the music is actually from a larger work in progress, one which he says: "I am quite sure no one, not even myself, will ever hear in its entirety, as it stands at around 9 hours and is not complete." After hearing Tabernacle, we sure hope we are able to hear the rest of the composition, because Tabernacle is simply excellent, a mesmerizing collection of ambient pieces that feel both symphonic and electronic, weaving together some of the most intensely visual music we
