Crystal Dreams is the brain child of musician and keyboard player Joel Sutton who is based in Canberra, Australia. Joel brings together tracks in both the ambient and new age genres using a combination of analog synthesizer sounds and traditional new age sounds (e.g. Waterfalls, Koto, Bamboo Flute, and Pan Flute). The end results are a blend of melodic relaxation journeys and meditative ambient landscapes all with a strong emphasis on improvisation.

Joel’s musical journey began around 1988 when his grandparents gave him their old upright piano. It wasn’t long (with the help of one or two piano lessons of course) before he was able to find his away around the keyboard well enough to start putting together rudimentary compositions of his own. A few years later a friend introduced him to the world of synthesizers and electronic music lessons in high school immediately followed. He has been composing and producing electronic music tracks ever since.

In early 2009 Joel suffered an attack of severe depression and was not able to continue working at his day job. At the recommendation of his psychologist he began to focus on a creative project and so the Crystal Dreams Podcast was born. It managed to get over 1700 episode hits until its last episode in September 2009. Joel felt that this project was a complete success and it left him with no doubt that there was an audience for his music. The next phase was to gather a collection of polished tracks for release while still integrating the best elements of the improvisational podcast.

“It’s a real bizarre twist of fate that the depressed super-anxious guy ended up doing relaxation music. Some days it’s me that really needs to chill out! Seriously though, actually creating a new track is something I find very relaxing and I know if I’m relaxing then the listener will be able to relax too.”

Joel plans to carry on with the spirit of the original podcast in his future album and EP releases. Many of these will be licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses which allows flexible distribution (e.g. burning CDs for your friends and family) and will be available for download via the Crystal Dreams Music web site.