Canyon Dreams

I've spent most of my holidays in the middle west, having visited almost all of the places shown on this DVD at least once. The pictures taken on those locations are simply marvelous. And as I am also a great fan of the music of Tangerine Dream (which is sometimes wrongly accused as being "new age") I have no other choice of voting 9/10, only denying the highest rating because of the missing Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. This one is to lay back and dream.

This DVD appears to be targetted at someone who will just put it on and play it in an endless loop in the background. It's organized as a series of music videos of the Grand Canyon set to various pieces of Tangerine Dream music.

Unfortunately, the TD music is dull, and the transfer to DVD looks rather blurry and dim. Too expensive a DVD for what it is.

I bought the VHS years ago and I watch it now and then. I have quite a few other titles that are similar to this 'video album'. Including rec of VH1 'New Visions' New Age/Smooth Jazz/Prog-Synth music Videos from the 80s. New Visions regular VJ was Frankie Crocker the famous DJ at WBLS in NYC. Celebrity guest hosts could invite other artists. Guest Hosts that I know of: Pat Metheny, Laurie Anderson, Chick Corea, Anthony Phillips, Micheal Hedges, David Torn, Mark Egan, Bill Evans, Wynton Marsalis, Larry Fast, Carlos Alomar, Gary Burton, Bill Bruford, Nile Rodgers. Ben Sidran took over as VJ when the format went to all Jazz in 1990. 'Earth Scapes' OOP on VHS and DVD is my personal favorite. 'Desert Vision' is another great video album. 'Natural States' is OK but a 14min segment is fantastic. Windham Hill released many video albums. My favorite is 'Seasons'. 'Chronos' is very good. It's all good and worth the time collecting.

Contents are great and music is just wonderful. It can put you to sleep if you would like or enjoy it just to relax. The scenes of the desert are incredible but fuzzy and dull. The old VHS tape looks a lot better. I hope someday Canyon Dreams (and Desert Vision) will be released by Miramar in HD. That would be awesome. However, I will probably wait another twenty years. The only thing I can think positive is it's a DVD and easy to access titles - wow. Like me, this appears to be old school stuff. The audio is OK but 5.1 Dolby surround would even be better. Special features are good and OK as is. Buy the VHS Tape if you can ever find it and play it on a S-VHS machine - it will look a lot better.