Real Music
New Age, 2000

Glorious elevator music, behold! Cousteau’s Dream sees a group of New Age performers contributing tracks for this charity album. Some of the money I spend on it will go to societies that work to protect the marine ecology such as the EarthSea Institute and the Cousteau Society.

Not a bad cause, really.

The music here isn’t bad, despite the presence of – eeek – Yanni.

Since the theme is the ocean, there are lots of sweepy, calming music here. From Vangelis to Kitaro to Aria to Tim Wheater, there are enough soothing music to make one see the ocean in their mind. Or retch, as in the case of Yanni’s smarmy Secret Vows.

My favorite is Aria’s beautiful rework of the opera piece Un Bel Di and Richard Burmer’s soaring Sun’s Coming Out. Kevin Kern’s To Sleep on Angels’ Wings is pretty good too. 2002’s Stella Maris is just ethereal.

Still, it’s for the oceans, the coral reefs, and the fish people. The music’s nice, sweeping, and epic, and there’s always the skip button when Yanni comes on.