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ever has and on the back of the singers work with Howard Shore for The Lord of The Rings film score this album is finding an appreciative audience amongst those who would not normally venture into such poppy new age territory.

If "Long Long Journey" feels like a filler of a track compared to the majesty that surrounds it, it should be remembered that this is the sort of album that will be played as background music, its music to wash off the stress of a hard day as you sprawl on the sofa, glass of shiraz in hand, dreaming of distant places and unrealised ambition. Oh, that's just me then, but you know what I'm getting at. Its not music to be analysed too closely, unless of course you are writing a review of it that is. "Sumiregusa" is interesting, not least because it is based on a haiku poem by Basho and translates as Wild Violet. Again it is the minimal approach that pays dividends, the clean vocal sound contrasts with the more distant layered backing. It is a complex tapestry of sounds with a rising and falling dynamic that makes the song unpredictable. The album seems to lose its way a bit at this point falling into very standard formats. "Somebody Said Goodbye" and " Moment Lost" whilst being lovely songs make you feel as if the artists are not trying too hard and have rehashed some old sounds and reworked them, but like I said at the outset, this is not an act that charges off into unbroken territory, so maybe better that than trying something new. The instrumental song "Drifting" reminds us that the singer is not just a fantastic voice but a more than competent piano player and multi instrumentalist and the song is a haunting nocturne, Chopin for the new age. Piano also features highly on "Amid The Falling Snow" and again we are treated to the sumptuous vocals that have become the trademark of an Enya album. We end as we began with the dulcet Loxian tones of "Water Shows The Hidden Heart" and as I haven't used the word ethereal in a while, it is exactly the word you need to hear at this point.

As I said, this is a journey that you are already half familiar with, you know what sort of music you are going to be faced with and by the time you come to the end, you will not be disappointed. Its shares many similarities with all of the preceding albums but has lost a lot of the overtly poppy tones of earlier work such as "Anywhere Is" and leans more in a contemporary classic cum new age category and if there isn't such a genre already existing then its time to make one. Whilst this album seems to have been created in a cloistered solitude uninfluenced by the world around it, it does however, have the confidence in itself to be able to pay homage to the artists past work, thus blending the new with the old, the unfamiliar with the already experienced. A gorgeous album that evokes far away places, past times and dreamscapes, did I mention the word ethereal?

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