Artist: David Arkenstone
Album Title: Visions of Christmas
Genre/Style: New Age
Release Year: 2010
I started this project with a rule for myself: if I listen to part of a track, I have to listen to the entire album. It’s Day 2, and I already regret that decision because it means I had to listen to this terrible collection of electronic kitsch. Honestly, do people actually enjoy this sort of thing? It’s just so awful. The overall effect is of a synthesizer orchestra backing a music box.
If there’s any saving grace — and there’s not — it’s that Arkenstone frontloads the album with his most bombastically horrible recordings so that the latter portion leaves you feeling more numb than psychotic. The least objectionable track is “Angels in the Snow”, a Hans Zimmer-esque melody that actually goes pretty light on the “horses galloping” intensity of everything that comes before it. It does nothing, however, to conjure the feeling of Christmas, nor does the out-of-place “Arabian Dance”. “The Holly and the Ivy” is refreshingly jazzy, but I’m not prepared to call it good.
Rating: 
This is the adult equivalent of 1980s heavy metal music that told you to kill yourself.
