Portrait of Laraaji by Daniel Oduntan

Back in 2018, before he released his elaborate and ornate Rare Birds album, my pal Jonathan Wilson told me that he’d spent most of the past few years working on old muscle cars instead of working on new music. Five years had elapsed between 2013’s Fanfare and his then new album, and what had changed, he told me, was when Laraaji—who Jonathan described as “musical royalty”—made a visit to his studio and laid down a mystical vocal that made a song he’d been working on come alive dramatically. After that the rest of it just flowed he said, like a creative block had been removed.

I hadn’t heard Laraaji’s name for some time. He’s best known as Brian Eno’s collaborator on Ambient 3: Day of Radiance. In recent decades, he mostly travels in New Age and therapeutic circles teaching “laughter meditation,” but since that conversation with Jonathan, I’ve started to pay more attention to Laraaji’s music as he’s been experiencing a late career revitalization that’s seen much of his back catalog, and new music, too, released by Numero Group, Light In The Attic, Leaving Records and the Eno-associated All Saints record label, including the three-record set Celestial Music 1978-2011.

Laraaji’s upcoming Sun Piano album finds the pioneering transcendentalist musician returning to his first instrument. Recorded in a Brooklyn church by producer Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Mary Lattimore), Sun Piano is being released by All Saints Records on July 17.  A companion LP, Moon Piano, and an extended EP of piano/autoharp duets will follow later in the year.
 

 
More Laraaji after the jump…