On this album, which clocks in at over seventy minutes, Nakai plays the Native American Flute and Eaton trots out various versions of the acoustic guitar and they create a series of kind of ambient instrumentals. On a couple of tracks, there’s some light percussion and some light chants on a couple as well. It’s all very Native American, you know, and I don’t even remember where I got this, but it’s the kind of CD that just ends up on your shelf at some point if you’re Native. I went into it honestly not expecting all that much and I was somewhat pleasantly surprised. It’s tempting to call an album that’s entirely ambient flute-and-acoustic-guitar duets “spa music,” but this is better than that. Nakai & Eaton are genuinely reaching for some artistic merit here; the album is split into three long suites and the album liner notes include some poetry relating to the various tracks. And they’re talented enough that I listened to this CD three or four times and I was actually never bored by it. It isn’t quite the wallpaper music of this type often is. That said, it does all have a very samey quality and it isn’t transcendently beautiful or anything, just pleasant enough. If you’re looking for Native inspired music, this is a better place to start than a lot of other, less artistically motivated albums, but is it something you really need to hear as a work of art? Not really. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – Native American influenced flute and guitar ambience has more than the usual pretensions to artistry and isn’t as dull as it might be; but it’s not exactly good, just not bad. 2 ½ stars.