HEROIC NEW AGE

Few New Age recording artists are doing quite what Steve Cochrane is doing: using the modern orchestra of synthesizers and samplers to produce symphonic tone poems that are not basically introspective and "sedating" in nature, but outgoing and inspiring. The Toronto composer takes his cue not so much from the dreamy proto-New Agers like Debussy and Satie, but from the warmer-blooded romantics, like Schubert and Wagner. The result is a dynamic music not for chillin', but for empowerin': a sonic breakfast of champions, music to slay dragons by.

Though Cochrane composes with near classical complexity, he clearly aims to please, not to impress or challenge -- he couldn't be more accessible. With melodic and rhythmic hooks aplenty, including frequent rock-beat outbursts and stinging lead guitar solos, this balding Rush fan's 65-minute CD lies somewhere stylistically between progressive rock and "classical gas" (you can actually hear some lovely Mason Williamsesque guitar stylings by the composer on many of the cuts).

I was put off at first by the poor-man's-orchestra quality of Cochrane's sampled and synthesized substitute. Though Cochrane uses at least one acoustic instrument (that beautifully played guitar), most of these orchestral-style compositions beg to be performed by the real thing or by a more advanced electronic emulation, augmented by synthesizers, not the other way around. But now that I'm on to my fourth or fifth listen, the music has almost entirely overcome its sometimes ungainly synthetic trappings. Only a few timbral sour notes remain, such as the harsh "rays" of the synthetic horns in "Reason is the Rising Sun" and the bull-in-a-china-shop grunge leadwork in "Active Minds and Hopeful Hearts." However, these foibles are easily overlooked when there is so much finely turned, heartwarming music here to compensate (e.g., "At Love's Door" and "Dancing Under a Starlit Sky").