Tristeza’s 2000 album Dream Signals in Full Circles was slammed by Pitchfork (3.5 stars!) for sounding like something that new age record label Windham Hill might release. The review sounds so dated now, very Y2K indie rock derision. Pretty sure we didn’t add the album to the heavy rotation list at the college radio station, but I remember really liking this record. (Some of us have been made Disagreeing With Pitchfork a thing for nigh on two decades!!) I didn’t have anything bad to say about Windham Hill either; my fifth grade teacher had played Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast at the end of almost every school day and I remained quite fond of that album. I cannot exactly recall where we were in the Cycle of Ironic Appreciations back then, but it was probably not safe yet for people trying to make Music Director at a college radio station to admit to that. Nice to be old now.

And if you want to go straight to the new age tap root: