Nepenthe Music & Publishing Release Date: March 1, 2007 Genre: New Age; Ambient Track Count: 10 Running Time: 52 minutes Catalog No.: AMC06010 Composer Dwight Ashley created solo works for more than 20 years before his first CD, Discrete Carbon, was issued in 2004. Prior to that project, many came to know him through two collaborations of the early 1990s with fellow Ohio artist Tim Story - A Desperate Serenity and Drop. Although Watermelon Sugar is his most recent solo release, the bulk of the album was actually recorded 19 years prior, during the time the Ashley/Story projects were produced. Those familiar with Serenity and Drop will find in Watermelon Sugar telling overtones of Story's' influence during this period - while those who know Ashley largely through his solo work of the mid 2000's will get a glimpse into an unseen phase of his career that clearly lays the groundwork for his later solo projects. The first several tracks on WS have a distinctly dreamy, wistful character that at the outset seem almost too pretty for an Ashley work. In his characteristic fashion, however, the serene note on which the album begins is transformed almost seamlessly into emotional discord at the title track, an aching anthem to distant memories and personal loss. In the middle of the album, Ashley tips his hand with an earlier version of an Ashley/Story track, Jealous Entropy No. 1. White China, is somewhat of a companion piece to the previously released Poppies for Irene, both of w