Kindred Souls

Nothing should really surprise us in the global village of world music any more, but even so Adrian Freedman’s CV expands the envelope. A Yorkshireman who played trumpet in a school jazz band, Bach sonatas on a recorder, drums in a rock group and Stockhausen in a contemporary music ensemble, in 1990 he left it all behind to spend eight years studying the Japanese shakuhachi (flute) in Kyoto.

Since then he’s played the shakuhachi for the Dalai Lama and released a series of ambient albums with New Age titles such as Lotus Rising and Zen Stillness. On Kindred Souls he’s joined by an eclectic bunch of fellow travellers from around the globe on a bewildering array of instruments including didgeridoo, Chinese erhu, saz, violin, kora and kalimba. His flute playing is undeniably beautiful but, like so much New Age music, the album lacks focus and ultimately, to these ears, adds up to something less than the sum of its considerable parts.

The platitudinous lyrics on songs with titles such as ‘Peace Awakening’ are inoffensively sung, but the best vocals on the album come from the throat of the bird heard duetting with Freedman’s flute on ‘Nightingale Soul Call’. Now that really is Zen.