Clifford White

Purists regard him as Britain’s foremost exponent of New Age rock. Certainly, this self-taught musician’s albums are the ones most often heard hovering in the background in hip painting studios, dental surgeries, health food stores, massage parlours, meditation and improvised dance classes, and in what used to be known as “head shops”. Adjectives like “restful”, “caressing” and “atmospheric” crop up in critiques of White’s unhurried keyboard-dominat­ed instrumentals which, not designed to “go anywhere”, were inspired by a combination of his captivation with the Seventies works of Vangelis and Mike Oldfield, and attendance at a Mind, Body and Spirit festival.
With pianist Jon Land, he opened an eight-track stu­dio where Ascension—the first of an album trilogy—was recorded in 1984. Through outlets that were not chart- return shops, it sold in vast quantities throughout Europe and North America, principally by word of mouth. Though functioning in a sphere supposed to preclude star­dom, Top 20 entries of mystical bent by the Clannad- Enya family and, later, Enigma caused White to mull over contracts offered by major record companies, and ven­ture closer to mainstream pop via 1992’s The Lifespring.