So last week while I was babysitting my two month-old granddaughter Zoe, I had Soundscapes one of Comcast’s Music Choice stations on the TV. My thought was that the instrumental New Age music would keep us both relaxed, and I think that for the most part it did the trick, at least for me. Some old friends like R Carlos Nakai and Peter Kater made an appearance with a track from their album Ritual, along with some music from David Arkenstone. There also was a lot of music from folks that I didn’t know, like Armand & Angelina and their album Sacred Flute Journeys and a group named A Beginner’s Mind and their release Mindust. After I came home I went to Spotify and gave the album a listen and really liked the album a lot.
I went searching for information about the band and album, but I didn’t find much. It doesn’t appear that they have a website, no Facebook or MySpace page, the only thing that I found was a page at BandCamp! At that page I read……
Peter Day and Ben Brooks have been playing music for over 30 years off and on. They are from Pasadena, California. Mindust is currently being played on Air Force One, the Soundscapes Music Choice channel and other outlets.
Ok so now we know that Peter Day and Ben Brooks are A Beginner’s Mind. Peter plays keyboards and nylon-stringed guitar
while Ben plays the flute!! Both of them are fine musicians in my ever so humble opinion. Here’s what Ben wrote about making the album…..
I don’t have a reference point to describe this collection of pieces. That’s because Peter and I were flying by the seat of our pants. No writing, no rehearsal, no idea what we were going to play. Peter would arrive at my home studio on a weekend afternoon. We’d talk about our lives for a little while….then punch RECORD. That’s the truth! That’s where these recordings began. We added the orchestration and percussion later. But, the original recording was just guitar or KORG KARMA keyboard (when Peter felt like playing it) and flute. We really had no expectations or agenda. Over time we accumulated quite a few recordings and narrowed them down to what you have here. Hope you like it! — Ben Brooks January 1, 2014
The percussion they added later was provided by Rich Mangicaro!
So if you get a chance head over to their Bandcamp page I think you’ll like them! Here’s a short three track playlist from Spotify…….
