#arji oceananda

The album is primarily a collaborative process between ambient spiritualist Laraaji, who sings, laughs and plays an ethereal electronic zither, his touring partner and kindred spirit Arji OceAnanda also singing and playing a variety of percussive and electronic sounds and Christopher Bono of Nous, a shifting collective of artists convened to explore the spiritual dimensions of music. Bono and the two others met at a yoga retreat, thrown together at an empty lunch table between sessions and bonded over a shared love of meditative practices before they knew that they were all musicians. When that common thread emerged, Bono invited the pair to his Dreamland Studios where they meditated and improvised with a like-minded group of players on the NOUS I and NOUS II albums. Circle of Celebration is the fourth NOUS undertaking, and the one that puts Laraaji and OceAnanda at the center of its mystic exploration.

The cuts are long and open-ended, blossoming out over time with layered textures of synths and electronics, pounding drums and a great variety of alternate percussion instruments, cascading, intercrossing vocals and the natural sounds of water, stones and wind. The ensemble is heavy on drummers. In addition to the core three, Greg Fox of Guardian Alien, Thor Harris of Swans and Angels of Light, Greg Mcmurray from So Percussion and Kevin McMahon all contribute forms of percussion. Shahzad Ismaily does his usual restrained magic with electrics, guitar, bass and drums. As you might expect, the improvisations have a lot of rhythmic parts, but they are subtle. Things shake and rattle and jangle and pound, but only within the context of the music, which swells in an organic way, moving forward but also remaining meditative and centered.

The thrill of these pieces comes, in large part, from the vocals, with solo lines that unfurl in silky waves, and muttering rhythmic communal choruses that support them. You can hear both the quest of the individual and the reassurance of the group in this singing, with leadership shifting from Bono to Laraaji to OceAnanda as the spirit moves them. The singing is also ecstatically non-verbal, or at least non-English, with phrases made of exuberant “heys” and “bah-bahs” and “oom-a-lay-has,” expressing joy but not narrative. Some of the phrases may be mantras (like “Hari Ram”), but others have the aura of speaking in tongues, the spirit running on ahead of the mind to find epiphany.

It is hard to express exactly how uplifting this music is, how it creates a bright, lucid, dreamlike space and maintains excitement and calm somehow simultaneously. If you find yourself needing good, positive vibes some gloomy December afternoon, when your Twitter feed is about the end of everything, and it’s cold and you’re out of energy, put on Circle of Celebration. You might even try laughing. You’ll feel better.