by Tom SchulteCharacterization and ethnic musical setting of Dakota Indiana cosmological beliefs is a stunning and enchanting theme to this album from Austria's Blue Chip Orchestra. Red Sky Beat is a musical wax museum with Native American deities presented in situ through the sonic diorama of otherworldly chanting, subtly lit into life by ethereal synth beats with guitar, keyboards, and percussion. One half of the creating duo, computer composer Hubert Bognermayr, comes from a symphonic rock background (as head of 1970s Austrian group Eela Craig) and the other, multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer Harald Zuschader, is his partner from that beginning. The grand design and experimentalism of art rock is woven through Red Sky Beat but tempered into delicate and subtle beauty by the economic and considerate principles of ambient electronica. The result is big tranquility, serene beat music. This journey to indigenous people's primal spirit world is curated with the subtle care of electronic frame drum accompanying an elder's holy vocalizations, birdsong lucidly rising from synthesized wooden flutes.