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Mojo DECEMBER 2017 - by David Sheppard

LARAAJI: BRING ON THE SUN

A glut of new music by swami-like ambient veteran.

Resurgent after the recent re-release of his 1980, Eno-produced Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance benchmark, Laraaji returns with eight immersive essays for plucked and strummed instruments, notably his signature zither and thumb pianos, sporadically bathed in discrete clouds of synthesizer. While largely inhabiting terrain Gordon first staked out four decades ago - just south of ambient and north of new age - the album's eight, unusually varied essays largely eschew sonic wallpaper stereotype, invested as they are with playfulness and a genuine sense of Easternflavoured spiritual uplift. This is true even on the uncharacteristically song-like Reborn In Virginia, which welds Gordon's genial childhood reminiscences to a tableau of zithers, tablas and Indian drones, and which elliptically recalls Steve Reich's Different Trains by way of Alice Coltrane's devotional music. Sun Gong, proffering two new, lengthy Laraaji meditations for the titular metallic percussion, is released simultaneously.