Lights of Laniakea
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley October 21, 2015
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Kathy Sanborn describes her musical style as versatile; In her latest release, ‘Lights of Laniakea’, she has delivered once again with her wonderful range of vocal styles being presented at their best.
Moving effortlessly from pure vocalisation as an instrumental component of her band to the Latin jazz rhythms, cool jazz beats, a little dash of the blues and sultry velvety sounds reminiscent of Sade, the work is fresh, enjoyable and delicate in a strangely robust manner!
The inspiration for this album comes from the mapping of a new supercluster in space by the University of Hawaii in 2014, which contains the Milky Way. The supercluster was named “Laniakea’, which means Immeasurable Heaven, and also pays tribute to the Polynesian navigators who used the stars and star maps to navigate their way across the oceans.
Immeasurable variations created and blended together to take the vocalisation of sound into the light of spiritual awareness, has been captured by Sanborn and Ricky Kej, working together to create a symbolic transference relating to movement towards the light of the cosmos to help light our way, as we search for positivity, light, love and goodness as an integral component of our lives.
Sanborn considers she is more of songwriter than a singer but with her ability to change styles almost at a whim, coupled with her gentle, fluent use of vocals put her up there with the best of them in the genre of world-fusion of the new age variety.
As you listen to the words gently melded into the music you will hear a recurrent theme of light, abundant love, a belief that someday people will stop the wars and work towards making the world a better place, coupled with a genuine desire to encourage people to move away from the darkness, into the healing light.
The pallet is as diverse as it is beautiful and with the undoubted skills of Kej adding to the mix, the alchemy reaches out to touch and soothe on many, many levels making incredibly pleasurable listening.