Keys to ImaginationYanni Date: 25 October, 1990   —   Music product page   read other reviews Rating:

I'm really going nutty now… reviewing Yanni CDs out of nowhere! Muhahaha — actually, that's not totally true. This is one of my longtime personal faves, altho I haven't listened to it in just that: a long time. I used to put on this CD on the stereo the night before going to high school for several years in a row. I got it for what seemed, at the time, too high a price at a local shop ($20 Cdn. with tax was it now?) and I wondered why all 74-whatever minutes of the disc wasn't used up, but as soon as the music hit my ears, I stopped complaining and fell asleep. In a good way.

This CD has some of the hallmark classics of the Yanni canon, including the very catchy tune of "Santorini" here which sounds terribly primitive if you've ever listened to the much grander Live At The Acropolis version, but you can see, almost a decade before that majestic performance ever took place, how the building blocks of such a powerful tune came to be. Also a favorite is the title track, with its propulsive rhythms and melodies — played with much ado of an exotic flair — on synthesizer timbres midway between a guitar, a piano, and a bouzouki. Droney repetition is kept to a minimum and the passages evolve fluidly, evoking a lot of dynamic imagery in one's mind.

Keys To Imagination is the work that got me into Yanni's music — there isn't a weak track on here, and each of them is an orchestrally synthesized gem in its own right. If I were to critique something about this album, it'd be that like classic NES games I used to play, coming back to it many years later with all the knowledge I'd acquired make me analyze it so much more. I think that took some of the joy out of it for me, being able to deconstruct the music on a level I couldn't when I was very young, but here's the thing: along with that came new levels of discovery deeper within, of things that I hadn't previously realized, of dissonances resolving and of voicing techniques I'd enjoyed but not had deeper appreciation for as a youth. So, that slides it back up the starscale for me.

And it all came together.