MUSIC

This is a lovely and surprising treat indeed. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow and much more) partners with vocalist Atsuko Kamura (Mizutama Shobodan aka Polka Dot Fire Brigade and Frank Chickens) to present 37 compositions, expanding the usual sub-10-second acoustic life of classic haiku into a varied suite of compositions which place the gem-like poems, spoken and sung in both English and Japanese by Hodgkinson and Kamura, into gorgeous musical frames composed by Hodgkinson. "Haiku In The Wide World" lovingly embraces texts spanning the 17th to 20th centuries, revered examples of a long-established Japanese literary form, bringing these brief poems into the realms of musical art, setting them in an extended network of sonic inter-relationships. The instrumental textures, paradoxically sparse yet rich, crystalline yet warm, are provided by Hodgkinson’s own clarinet and other sound sources, as well as beautifully played and crisply recorded french horn, viola, violin, cello and acoustic guitar. The voices and instrumental sounds fuse with the poetic images, each throwing light and casting shadows on each, revealing hidden significances and building resonances across the arc of the release. The Japanese and English voicings of the haiku also provide further layers of significance, resonance and communication. The English translations, by poet Harry Gilonis, sparked Hodgkinson to initiate this project, a dancing, shifting terrain of life moving through the seasons and the comings and goings of the moon and sun. This project is a unique world, distinctly different from what either Hodgkinson and Kamura have previously accomplished. "Haiku In The Wide World" is a co-release, with ReR launching a UK CD version; EM Records provides both CD and 2LP versions. The tracks and sequence are the same for both labels, but the cover art is different — perhaps you should buy each version; "Haiku In The Wide World" is certainly worthy.

From Where You Came unspools as a series of nocturnal transmissions, altered-state refinements, and vivid stories, rich in vibrant, illuminating qualities. Indexing 19th century programmatic music, mid-’70s jazz, and a distinctively colourful and multi-dimensional approach to composition that embraces improvisation, Coverdale alloys synthesis with live instrumentation in a gesture of reconnection with land and body through sound. Approaching composition as a diagnostic methodology to spiritual ends, she conducts emotional resonance like currents of charge, hard-wiring the purely felt into electronic signals.

Though written and recorded on several continents, including at the GRM Studio in Paris and the Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm, From Where You Came was completed in rural Ontario, Canada. Featuring contributions from multidisciplinary sound artist and cellist Anne Bourne and trombonist Kalia Vandever, the album’s 11 expansive yet condensed compositions incorporate strings, woodwind, brass, keys, software and modular synthesis, inscribing a musical language that resonates animations with unfiltered, striking clarity. Coverdale's own voice melts into air amidst the enveloping swell of the album’s opening prelude: “Everything you know is real,” she sings on “Eternity,” “I’m sorry, life is beautiful… .” As though in response, oscillating vividly between animism and animalism, the album that follows is brimming with life in all its stunning complexity.

Reckoning with the experience of grief, dislocation, and the pressure of total freedom and independence, Coverdale yields supernatural capacity to alchemize tribulation into highly imaginative and inspiring fantasy epics of sound. In the piloted flight of “Daze,” wind choruses dance and twirl in ornate punctuated cycles as dissonant portamentos annotate modulatory ascent to soaring heights, gliding and churning across turbulent gails to new pockets of harmonic plateaus, stabilizing periodically through rhythmic gait for rest. It feels like the joy of flight. In other spiritual quests, sound becomes a feat of physics; physical and subterranean, material, and even destructive, amongst highland drone figures in “Freedom.” Melancholic restlessness and will-summoning entrench furtive flurries of energy on “Coming Around,” skittish, tacit, and reluctantly yearning chimes illuminate a granular “Problem of No Name,” and ecstatic, messy-haired catharsis blurts release through the drummed sample-based sequences of “Offload Flip.”

Each new narrative finds rootedness in a changing environment, giving a sense this is ecological adaptation made into music, as a way to navigate being in the world. Speaking directly to the rootlessness and alienation of modernity while processing the thrill and pain of being alive, From Where You Came draws immense strength through a commitment to material groundedness, from where we are able to view the scale of our own mythology, the worlds we want to build, and the stories we are determined to tell. 

THE COMPOSERS NOTES ON THE WORKS

The Machines, which date from the period 1967-1972 represent a departure from the more traditionally “narrative” nature of the rest of my pieces. I use the word Machine to define a consistent process governing a series of musical actions within a particular sound world and, by extension, the listener’s perception thereof. One might thus regard the Welsh Rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese.

Autumn Countdown Machine presents the guaranteed dis-simultaneity of six pairs of bass melody instruments, each conducted by a percussionist playing in time with, and making minor adjustments to the setting of a bell-metronome.

Son of Gothic Chord presents four keyboard players’ mobilisation of a sequential chord progression rising through the span of an octave.

Jews Harp Machine presents various permutations of the articulations “Ging, Gang, Gong,Gung, Ho!”

Drinking and Hooting Machine presents some observations on the world of bottles and their non-percussive musical potential. The effect of this piece has been compared to that of a large aviary full of owls all practising very slow descending scales.

John White, March 1976

THE SQUIRREL AND THE RICKETTY RACKETTY BRIDGE

The piece, for one player of two guitars, was written at the request of Derek Bailey, the jazz guitarist, in 1971. I had worked closely with Bailey from 1963-6 in and around Sheffield as a member of a group which included Tony Oxley on drums and myself on double-bass. Since that time, I have lost all interest in jazz, and in improvisation, and since Bailey was involved in both I wrote a piece which uses a technique which Bailey would be unlikely to have evolved in his playing. The two guitars are played simultaneously, each one lying flat on its back, and they are arranged side by side so that the two fingerboards can be played with the fingers hammering down on them, like two keyboards. In addition, the score contains a number of ironic references to jazz and to its critical literature - short texts added to the ‘musical’ notations, somewhat in the spirit of Erik Satie, involving the performer in a hypothetical dialogue with the composer using fragments culled from particularly banal pieces of jazz criticism e.g. “ ‘there is an area up here’, holding his hand above his head, palm down,’ where musical categories do not exist.’ ”. The left hand of the player moves at an even pulse, like the walking jazz bass, at a tempo “between Lady is a Tramp” as a medium bounce, and Cherokee as an embarrassment to lesser, and more intrepid, musicians”, while the right hand punctuates this with short notes, like a highly selective, or extremely lazy, trumpet soloist. The title involves an oblique pun to do with the nut of the guitar, the guitar’s bridge, the faint noise of the music in between – that each attack gives two pitches rather than one – and an English children’s song about Billy Goat Gruff.
Derek Bailey recorded the piece on Incus Records in 1971, and this new version is a multiple one, four players on eight guitars, in which each player uses a pair of guitars which are characteristically different from those used by the others.

Gavin Bryars (1971) 

Aran
‘‘Aran’’ and ‘‘McCrimmon Will Never Return’’ date from the period 1970-72, and were written for the Promenade Theatre Orchestra, a group started by White, consisting of 4 performers; White, Hobbs, Hugh Shrapnel and Alec Hill.
‘‘Aran’’was written at a time when the PTO was beginning to combine the sounds of reed organs and toy pianos, the original instruments of the group, with some newly-acquired percussion instruments. The note-to-note procedure of the piece was determined by random means, in the hope of producing a gentle unpredictability in the final result. It was hoped that the whole would be grittily resonant. This recorded version, for 12 performers, is generally more soft-centred than the original.

American Standard
Although the instrumentation of the piece is not specified, an ideal group would be similar to that which performed this version, recorded at the first performance of the piece in March 1973. It is played by the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, directed by John Adams, the composer, and the instruments used here are:
Flute, clarinet, clarinet (doubling bass-clarinet), clarinet (doubling bass-drum), tuba, percussion (trap set), violin, 2 violas, cello, double-bass, and harp. A conductor is not necessary for performance, since the arrangement and distribution of parts depends on what instruments are available, and ensemble problems that arise are ‘‘to be worked out in standard American fashion: proposal, debate and vote’’. Extra materials, that anyone making a version considers appropriate, may be used in performance in various forms whether film, tape, video, speech, mime, dance etc. Each section of this performance has at least one example of the use of ‘‘extra materials’’.
The piece is in 3 parts, each separately performable, and separately titled:
1. John Philip Sousa
The use of a steady, insistent pulse makes the title’s derivation quite clear; the pulse is given by a bass drum and other instruments have constant pitches which are departed from and returned to. As with all 3 pieces, the dynamics are restrained and undramatic, with the exception of the ‘‘extra material’’ – a crisp snare-drum roll that both sets the tone and gives a dramatic touch that is not present anywhere else. This is not in the score.
2. Christian Zeal and Activity
The main body of the music consists of a series of long held notes, very consonant, in 4 parts which are occasionally synchronised to give unified chords. The instruments are divided into 4 groups according to their pitch ranges, with at least one sustaining instrument in a group, each group having a leader who cues movement from one note to the next. During this piece, the ‘‘extra material’’ consists of a tape-recording of a radio talk-show.
3. Sentimentals
This is the most melodic piece of the 3 and the one which involves the greatest range of variation, quoting extensively from Duke Ellington’s ‘‘Sophisticated Lady’’.The gentle swing of the trap set, that is added during the piece, is again not included in the score, and its presence gives the sound a distinctively Californian feel, close to that of the Beach Boys, or Hollywood studio bands.The curious ending is an ironic affirmation of the maudlin chromaticism of the Ellington piece which generates the music.

McCrimmon Will Never Return
‘‘McCrimmon Will Never Return’’ stems from a temporary interest in Piobaireachd (Pibroch), the most highly developed form of Scottish bagpipe music. The melody of the title has several variants, which are played simultaneously on 4 reed organs. The tempo is sufficiently slow that the characteristic skirls or flourishes in the music become audible as individual notes.

1, 2, 1-2-3-4
The piece is for instrumentalists/vocalists, each wearing headphones connected to a portable cassette machine. Each performer hears only the music in his headphones, music which contains ‘‘parts’’for his instrument or voice, and he plays, along with the cassette, his own instrumental part. His ability to reproduce this part depends on how familiar he is with what he hears, and this can range from careful practice over a period of weeks with his cassette to an immediate response from a first or second hearing. The present recording, to some extent, contains elements of these two extremes: a few players had played the piece on other occasions (at least one of which used the same material as is used on this recording), while others became acquainted with it for the first time in the recording studio.
Each performer plays the‘‘part’’that corresponds to his instrument.Thus, if the music be jazz, a bassist is likely to play more than, say, a violinist. In the case of a bassist hearing jazz (and, hence, usually a bass) on his headphones, he would attempt to play, as best he can, the bass-line in the headphones such that there is an intended one-to-one relationship between what he plays and what he hears in the headphones. He may try his part several times beforehand, or he may choose to busk ‘‘on the night’’, like the accompanist in cabaret who is told, in the middle of the act on stage, that there are no parts for the next number but that it is ‘‘Happy Streets and Paper Rainbows in D flat, 1, 2, 1-2-3-4’’ (and his entry must be prompt, even to the extent of ‘‘inventing’’ an eight-bar introduction).
In this performance, all the players have identical material on their cassettes, though each was recorded individually and not copied simultaneously, and their performance reflects a number of variables that occur: the starting point of the music on the cassettes is not precise (but the click of the machines switching on, however, is); the cassettes may not be all running at the same speed due to the uneven quality of the different machines, the state of their batteries and so on, and this, in turn, affects both the duration and key of the piece; players vary in their ability to ‘‘shadow’’ material (i.e. to simultaneously hear and reproduce); players, in this recording, vary in their familiarity with the material. The material itself, however, is perfectly homogeneous and the dislocations that occur do not destroy this. The piece was originally written for a series of concerts organised by John White and is, amiably, dedicated to him. 

Holuzam re-masters and re-issues Tózé Ferreira's watershed sound art LP from late 80s Portugal.

"Two records came out in 1988 that forever changed the perception of "experimental" or "serious" music produced in Portugal. These were "Plux Quba" by Nuno Canavarro and "Música de Baixa Fidelidade" by Tózé (António ) Ferreira. Both were released by the same label - Ama Romanta -, an influential independent imprint closely linked to avantgarde pop band Pop Dell'Arte. Because those records appeared in what could be perceived as an "alternative pop" framework, they rescued this difficult music from Academia. It helps that Canavarro played in a successful new wave pop band (Street Kids) during the period 1980-83. By association, being a friend since 1976, António was in close contact with many of the musicians and bands that were part of the equally celebrated and detested Portuguese Rock Boom (roughly 79-82).

He was not a musician then but through his friendship with Canavarro, who had the means to acquire electronic equipment, António became involved with that equipment and shared Canavarro's passion for experimentation and curiosity for knowledge. They tried to get hold of as many technical magazines as possible and learn while testing ideas. In 1983, Street Kids were about to break up, young lives drafted into the Army and maybe, in Canavarro's case, a whole new passion for challenging music similar to his bandmate Nuno Rebelo, by then in the process of discovering a wide range of "other" music mainly through Jorge Lima Barreto. Barreto, who had started Telectu with Vítor Rua, possessed a huge book and record collection and, like Rua before them, Canavarro, Rebelo and Ferreira became fascinated by the pool of knowledge they now had access to by frequenting Barreto's house in Lisbon. He was roughly a decade older, had published several books and other writings throughout the 1970s, cultivated an anarchic stance and a penchant for cultural indoctrination. Rebelo was the first to be introduced via his contact with Rua (who had invited him to play in his other band GNR).

Overwhelmed, he felt the need to share his enthusiasm with friends and eventually took a few to the house in true pilgrimage fashion. To see the Light. Among the few he led there was even João Peste, founder of Ama Romanta. Canavarro and Ferreira preceded him.

Ferreira recalls an exciting learning process added to his experiments with Canavarro's array of synths such as the Korg Ms 20, Korg polysix, ARP Axxe, Roland SH-01, the Ensoniq Mirage sampler... He read in a magazine article about someone who had studied at the Institute of Sonology (then in Utrecht, Netherlands) and went there during a vacation trip in the Summer of 1983. He became excited by the prospect of studying at the Institute but money was a problem. Canavarro, on the other hand, was admitted there in the following year. Back in Portugal, Ferreira eventually abandoned his Chemical Engineering studies in Lisbon's Technical Institute in favour of a more focused music practice. He collaborated with Telectu during 1984 and 85 as a sort of technical engineer, implementing some recording solutions and background tapes and went to work at a thermoelectric power plant in Sines, hoping to make enough money to fund his musical studies. He did and proceeded with the paperwork for admission at the Institute of Sonology, now based in The Hague. António studied there in 1986-87 and the present album includes two compositions developed at the Institute: "More Adult Music" and "This Is Music, As It Was Expected", both featuring the voice of Rodney Waschka II. Among other activities and talents, Rodney is an expert in computer music and to António his voice sounded similar to Robert Ashley's, whose work he admired.

What happened at the Institute was a systematization of António's self-taught practice. Computer software, Musique Concrète, noise and silence, organisation of abstract ideas and sounds. The original notes on the back sleeve of the LP give some indication of process and thinking, but a more detailed account was given by António in the liner notes of the CD reissue in 2002, which are also included in this 2025 LP reissue.

The music sounds deep and detailed, despite the fact of António calling it low-fi ("Baixa Fidelidade"). It flows like an improvised performance where several musicians might be responding to each other, respectful of their mutual space. Drama occurs, as a natural emotional connection is sought by the listener. Piano, bells, drone, processed voices, even the clear narrative of Rodney Waschka II, contribute to create a sort of alternative perceptual reality. The sounds are almost tangible, more a part of the physical world than ethereal manifestations and thus it would not be correct to invoke "ambient music" as a selling point. But although "physical" and distinct, this music is still alien, more so in Portugal's 1988 environment. In March, helped by Canavarro, António set up a home studio and there he recorded the remaining material for this album: "Algumas Pessoas Olharam O Sul E Viram Deserto", "Um Som, Seguido De Uma Cena Negra E Malva" and "O Verão Nasceu Da Paixão De 1921".

"Música de Baixa Fidelidade" stands not only as a proof of great resilience but as one of those magnificent works of art coming from someone who balanced technical inclination and emotional sensibility. Because of that, Tózé Ferreira is able to decode the phantom world of sound for anyone who cares to experience the sensation of inhabiting a version of the Future. First ever vinyl reissue, reproduction of the original artwork with an additional insert. Made in collaboration with the artist and the support of Paulo Menezes (Plancton Music), who provided valuable assistance. Remastered by Taylor Deupree."

Allchival’s admirable, ongoing Roger Doyle retrospective takes in his brace of rudely glitching piano scapes and subtly febrile dream sequences written between 2011-2017 and comparable to everyone from the Eno siblings to K. Leimer or aspects of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Chasing invaluable reissue reminders of Doyle’s pioneering post-punk classics with Operating Theatre and The Threat in recent times, the languid and restless airs of ‘Homemade Ivory Dreams’ weighs in as a Doyle’s second solo curio to be dusted down and redressed by new ears increasingly attuned to Ireland’s lesser-covered past. More sublime and spacious than the expansive yet dense and delirious ‘Babel’ suite, which covered his late C.20th computer-based scores for theatre, the elegant and labyrinthine corridors of ‘Homemade Ivory Dreams’ spotlight farther sides to the Irish composer who is considered among the leading, progressive and experimental voices of his country and generation. 

Doyle typically parses a range of extra-musical cues from literature, poetry, and film within the 10 tracks on show, variously navigating fissures of memory and figments of figurative forms with a poetic grasp of musical metaphor that has long been his calling card. The notion of dreams seeded in the title guides him thru parallel dimensions of cuboid chamber classical in ‘CBG’ to ruder bouts of offbeat Autechrian electronica on ‘Skunk Hours in the Demon Mist’, and spur him to more rage dervishes of keys and guitar on ‘Enniode’, a tribute to Ennio Morricone, or setting of Irish language poem ‘Urnaí Maidne’ to a sort of brooding Euro film score vernacular on ‘The Nenuphar of Nina.’

He is perhaps most effective when more simply bask in the half light of memory on ‘Growing Up In Formaldehyde’, whose title is canny transliteration of a friend’s comment, “’what would you know - you grew up in formaldehyde”, which is a “benign reference to the village of Malahide where I spent my youth. Embalmed memory” and redolent of his shortcircuiting of the musical links between dialect, accent, and memory in the title and music of his classic ’Oizzo No’. Along with the feathered nuance of ’The Long Take’ and melancholia of ‘No Lone Man’ it’s a quietly charming 44’ in Doyle’s presence.

14 years in the making, “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” comprises 52 tracks / 3.5 hours of music composed, arranged and produced by Miguel with contributions from 50+ friends including Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, DOMi & JD Beck, Jeff Parker, Carlos Niño, Austin Peralta, Bennie Maupin, Gabe Noel, Jamael Dean, Jamire Williams, Burniss Travis II, Deantoni Parks, Josh Johnson, Marcus Gilmore and many more. 

Based in his hometown of Los Angeles, Miguel is one of the preeminent musicians, orchestrators, arrangers and composers of our time. “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” is his long-awaited inaugural album. It presents us with a passionate statement of intent, a labor of love, and a realm of beautiful possibilities. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” is a project that throws open and shares Miguel’s musical universe. It took shape over a dozen years, largely self-funded by Miguel, and showcasing his distinctly elegant musicianship (on violin, viola, cello and keyboards among other instruments) alongside his free-spirited dialogues with more than 50 instrumentalists. Volume 1 is the first in a planned triptych, which will collectively comprise ten-and-a-half-hours of original, refreshingly expansive music. Miguel connected with his guest musicians in versatile ways: through convivial studio dialogues; over remote communication during the pandemic era; and via the energy of live performances at LA venues including Del Monte Speakeasy (the gorgeously invigorating, piano-led “Dream Dance”) and Bluewhale (including “Ano Yo” with vivacious alto from Devin Daniels, and the cosmic harmonies of “Cho Oyu”). Bennie Maupin, the legendary US multi-reedist whose repertoire includes Miles Davis’s fusion opus Bitches Brew, plays bass clarinet on the entrancing opening number, “Kiseki”. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” reflects Miguel’s ethos that music is a natural, vitally unaffected life force. The titles across Volume 1’s tracks draw from international languages and traditions, including Spanish, Swahili, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Japanese and Hebrew, as well as the Buddhist practice that has been key to Miguel’s life since his twenties (“It’s very joyous and very hard, because it says that there’s no retirement age in human revolution,” he says). The tracks contrast in length, from “Zarra”’s vivid burst of analogue synths to the alluringly chilled melody of “Kairos (Amor Fati)”, yet there’s a gloriously unconstrained flow throughout, and each piece seems to unfurl and blossom into its own wondrous world. 

The blissfully radiant “Airavata” derives its title from the white elephant who carries the Hindu deity Indra: a divine being associated with elemental forces. It features Miguel on electric guitar (recorded then reversed to mesmerizing effect) and acoustic violin/viola, alongside bassist Gabe Noel and cellist Peter Jacobson. The stirring “Tzedakah” alludes to a Hebrew and Arabic concept of philanthropy and righteousness, and incorporates soulful bouzouki and oud within its multi-instrumental whirl. The vividly emotive piano melody “Mångata” is inspired by a Swedish word that describes the moon’s undulating reflection on water. 

“To me, playing music in any kind of setting is like swimming in an ocean of sounds and emotions and vibrations,” he says. “It’s the combination of all these different rivers, right? Western European classical music is an intense love and passion of mine; all the different genres within jazz music are a joy to practice and have given my life so much meaning; electronic music, world music, and all these different things I’ve been exploring all these years.” 

“I just want to be an enabler for magic and empowerment, everyone and everything. I believe in people… and I think that this is a very benevolent multiverse we’re living in. I feel like everything has infinite worth. That’s why I tried to have the diversity of tracks on there; every one is a mystical garden, in my opinion.” 

Honey for the Ants completes an ‘alchemical trilogy’, after The Funnel and Syphon. These albums are informed by mystical and gnostic texts, celebrating the weird, unhinged and occasionally beautiful.

In this forthcoming album the tonalities have shifted from mediaeval and renaissance to modernist dissonances. New singers and instrumentalists contribute to an emotional and textural richness achieved in a collaborative process. Distant musical periods, real and fictitious, are nonchalantly interwoven to create a delirious mongrel that salutes the imagination.

Wojciech Rusin is a Polish-born audio visual artist based in London. He draws inspiration from alchemical and gnostic texts, early renaissance choral music and Eastern European mythologies. He released Syphon LP on AD 93 in 2022 and The Funnel LP on Akashic Records in April 2019. He designs and makes 3D-printed reed instruments, reworking ancient designs with contemporary 3D modelling technologies.

In 2020 he released Meat for the Guard Dogs on Cafe OTO’s Takuroku digital imprint, and the Rufus Orbis cassette for Boomkat Editions / Documenting Sound series. His music has been featured on BBC Four and he has worked for The National Theatre and The Southbank Centre.

重要前衛作曲家ルイジ・ノーノの生誕100周年を記念した弦楽四重奏のための作品の再解釈音源が登場！ノーノ自身が「私はまったく変わっていない。優しさ、私的なものにも、集団的、政治的な側面がある。それゆえ、私の弦楽四重奏曲は、私の中の新しい回顧的な路線の表現ではなく、実験的な現在の私の立場の表現なのだ」と延べており、ベートーヴェンから続く西洋音楽の伝統を感じさせるターニングポイントとなる作品と評された超重要作品。演奏は現代音楽、エレクトロニクス、マルチメディアの実験分野で20年以上活躍しているモーリス・クァルテットで、ノーノの最も親密で熱狂的な側面を捉えることに成功した名演！300部限定お見逃しなく！

14 years in the making, “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” comprises 52 tracks / 3.5 hours of music composed, arranged and produced by Miguel with contributions from 50+ friends including Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, DOMi & JD Beck, Jeff Parker, Carlos Niño, Austin Peralta, Bennie Maupin, Gabe Noel, Jamael Dean, Jamire Williams, Burniss Travis II, Deantoni Parks, Josh Johnson, Marcus Gilmore and many more. 

Based in his hometown of Los Angeles, Miguel is one of the preeminent musicians, orchestrators, arrangers and composers of our time. “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” is his long-awaited inaugural album. It presents us with a passionate statement of intent, a labor of love, and a realm of beautiful possibilities. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” is a project that throws open and shares Miguel’s musical universe. It took shape over a dozen years, largely self-funded by Miguel, and showcasing his distinctly elegant musicianship (on violin, viola, cello and keyboards among other instruments) alongside his free-spirited dialogues with more than 50 instrumentalists. Volume 1 is the first in a planned triptych, which will collectively comprise ten-and-a-half-hours of original, refreshingly expansive music. Miguel connected with his guest musicians in versatile ways: through convivial studio dialogues; over remote communication during the pandemic era; and via the energy of live performances at LA venues including Del Monte Speakeasy (the gorgeously invigorating, piano-led “Dream Dance”) and Bluewhale (including “Ano Yo” with vivacious alto from Devin Daniels, and the cosmic harmonies of “Cho Oyu”). Bennie Maupin, the legendary US multi-reedist whose repertoire includes Miles Davis’s fusion opus Bitches Brew, plays bass clarinet on the entrancing opening number, “Kiseki”. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” reflects Miguel’s ethos that music is a natural, vitally unaffected life force. The titles across Volume 1’s tracks draw from international languages and traditions, including Spanish, Swahili, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Japanese and Hebrew, as well as the Buddhist practice that has been key to Miguel’s life since his twenties (“It’s very joyous and very hard, because it says that there’s no retirement age in human revolution,” he says). The tracks contrast in length, from “Zarra”’s vivid burst of analogue synths to the alluringly chilled melody of “Kairos (Amor Fati)”, yet there’s a gloriously unconstrained flow throughout, and each piece seems to unfurl and blossom into its own wondrous world. 

The blissfully radiant “Airavata” derives its title from the white elephant who carries the Hindu deity Indra: a divine being associated with elemental forces. It features Miguel on electric guitar (recorded then reversed to mesmerizing effect) and acoustic violin/viola, alongside bassist Gabe Noel and cellist Peter Jacobson. The stirring “Tzedakah” alludes to a Hebrew and Arabic concept of philanthropy and righteousness, and incorporates soulful bouzouki and oud within its multi-instrumental whirl. The vividly emotive piano melody “Mångata” is inspired by a Swedish word that describes the moon’s undulating reflection on water. 

“To me, playing music in any kind of setting is like swimming in an ocean of sounds and emotions and vibrations,” he says. “It’s the combination of all these different rivers, right? Western European classical music is an intense love and passion of mine; all the different genres within jazz music are a joy to practice and have given my life so much meaning; electronic music, world music, and all these different things I’ve been exploring all these years.” 

“I just want to be an enabler for magic and empowerment, everyone and everything. I believe in people… and I think that this is a very benevolent multiverse we’re living in. I feel like everything has infinite worth. That’s why I tried to have the diversity of tracks on there; every one is a mystical garden, in my opinion.”