2002 :: The Wishing Well (Galactic Playground Music)

The Wishing Well by 2002 is a sweeping, cinematic journey that weaves myth and memory into a lush symphonic dreamscape, where celestial strings, whispering flutes, and luminous guitars rise and fall like mountains and galaxies, carrying listeners into a realm both epic and intimately hopeful.

Celestial strings, human longing

The Wishing Well by 2002 lives up to its name, connecting listeners to a profound, ancient sense of hope and desire. The album possesses a magnificent cinematic sweep, with Randy, Pamela and Sarah Copus deploying rich volumes of strings, flutes, harps, and guitars, sometimes underpinned by sparse, ethereal percussive vocals, and features special guest violinist KeyReel Raskolenko on the opening track. The collection is inspired by global tales and personal history, intertwining the mythical and the personal with seamless grace. This is music that evokes huge mountains, endless seas, and planets whirling slowly, creating an endless symphonic sensation that is both grand and deeply intimate.

The album takes flight with “Overture: The Restless Heart,” a track that showcases the band’s range of composition styles. It’s a spectacular, big-screen zephyr of sound that slowly builds before exploding with strings, guitar and flute, all blending together in thrilling brilliance. The overture also features the violinist KeyReel who adds a brilliant layer of instrumental detail. Listening, I have the feeling of thundering giant horses heading into the sunrise with a new day ahead.

Uzbekistan born multi-instrumentalist KeyReel is a virtuoso player on 4-string and 5-string acoustic and electric violins. He is a classically trained musician with experience in classical chamber and orchestra music, fiddle music, improvisation, and music composition, he studies and plays jazz and occasionally performs with friendly bands on his 5-string electric violin.

The arms of our galaxy spread open before us and through our ears we can clearly see the Milky Way and our place in its spiral. Track 4, “The Spiral of Heaven” (3:50) brings streaming light beaming above, a piano in the cosmos, sounding slow and angelic while a harp builds the path up the stairs, adding very quiet delicate little pieces that fit perfectly, and the flute completes the picture, so big and beautiful, breathtaking and quiet. The bejeweled night sky appears to be completely still with some rare tiny scattered flashes. Track 5, “Dream Chasers” (3:56), brings changes, the feeling is something more frisky, light, and joyful, leaping about in tall grass at twilight with fireflies chasing each other through cascades of melodies, rhythms and textures.

Myth and memory in motion ::

With an icy piano, graceful, slow and easy, we are safe and ready for sleep, this takes all the time it needs, the feeling floats, slowly considering the depth of the water. Continuing the theme of music for sleeping, we drift off on an easy glide, all is smooth and relaxing as track 8 opens, “On the Wings of Angels” (4:01). Perhaps the wings of angels represent a belief in divine messengers and protectors that travel between the Earth and the celestial realms. In the music, the mood of Randy’s guitar stays dreamy and these moments suggest themselves in the slowly moving clouds, closing with “Savitri’s Dream.” We share a desire to be connected with the divine, radiating positive and sustaining emotional vibrations as the strings lift us all.

The Wishing Well is an invitation to a personal journey, one that successfully bridges diverse cultural mythologies with the band’s own rich history, all wrapped in a lush, highly produced sound. 2002 continues to prove that their willingness to blend styles across decades is their greatest strength. The music delightfully delivers a calming and restful oasis to linger longer within, and to dream upon.

The Wishing Well is available on Galactic Playground Music. [Bandcamp]