CD: Fairy of the Woods

As if conjured up from some dark but fragrant corner of the universal mind comes the music of Gary Stadler. An electronics engineer who started the album originally as a present for his girlfriend, Stadler was just playing around in his spare time. Friends with the independent label, Sequoia Records heard it and urged him to keep going and make something for the label, which he did for three years. The result is Fairy in the Woods, an album with so much heart and simplicity that you will want to drop your worldly concerns and possessions and just dive into the beauty, perhaps never to return.

The music speaks for itself and works in a gorgeous, unpretentious way. A dash of prime Enya floats over it, but in general this is simply gorgeous background music, ideal for taking a nap or driving through a beautiful countryside. The album opens with the sound of a glade at nightfall, with crickets and then a softly gliding piano line, which gradually expands out like ripples along a still pond, waking the fairies to their dance. The title track is a dreamy sea of overlapping and intertwining keyboard melodies, a wash of glowing synthesizer over alternating, simple piano melodies with soft chime and string touches.

"Pool of Light" brings you into the fairy chamber at last. Cascades of harpsichord add a sense of courtly propriety and decorum, signaling perhaps that the dreaming and waking part of your fairyland slumber has come to a close and that it is time to meet the queen herself. There's no need to worry or hastily straighten your cap and tie, though. Here there is nothing but gentleness, magic, and the essence of undemanding love. If you let it, the music can take you far away so fast that you may never want to return. It can give your spirit wings and make the tired old world of mortal strife fade like ants and anthills as you embrace the fluffy clouds of Celtic majesty. But all things fade, even the eternal castles of the fairies must vanish with the coming sun. At album's end, Stadler strikes a melancholy note of sadness, the inevitable follow-up to so much tranquil and rewarding joy. Just as mortals must shuffle off to bed at the call of night, so must the fairies in your hear! t and mind shuffle off at the dawn's first rays. Fear not, sad-eyed reveler, this album is not going anywhere, except maybe in your special case of favorites.