The past several years, it has seemed that many labels and even some artists have been playing it very safe, often trying to duplicate a successful recording or sound rather than breaking new ground or evolving. As beautiful and pleasant to listen to as it is, Across An Ocean of Dreams is very similar to River of Stars - something I would imagine many people will be very happy to hear. There are no surprises, and certainly no hard edges. Designed as music for healing and relaxation, this CD could be the poster child for New Age music. I had it in my “wake up” CD player for four mornings, and it woke me up the first couple of times because the music was new to me, but the third and fourth mornings I slept all the way through it, waking up very relaxed until I realized that I had overslept two days in a row! I put the CD in the car instead, where it took some of the tensions out of driving around the Bay Area until I got a little bored with it. If you are a fan of extremely smooth, utterly optimistic, ethereal music, wordless vocals, and floating melodies with no edges anywhere, this is for you! Instrumentation includes guitar, flutes, keyboards and a little piano, and strings. Across An Ocean of Dreams is available from most of the online music outlets and wherever Real Music’s releases are sold in retail stores.