Ambient Legend Laraaji Returns Home with “Sun Piano”
Laraaji's latest release is a work of playful imaginativeness.
Recorded on a grand piano in a church in Brooklyn, Laraaji's Sun Piano is a magnificent addition to the cosmic-ambient musician's expansive catalogue, which has spanned across genres and—in all likelihood, multiple dimensions.
Laraaji's musical story begins at the piano, which is perhaps why Sun Piano feels like coming home. Now a musician, mystic, and laughter meditation practitioner, Laraaji grew up in New Jersey in the 1950s. He first encountered the piano in childhood afternoons at church, and he filled spaces between Sunday school and church services imitating great piano players like Fats Domino. After picking up a wide variety of instruments, he attended Howard University, where he studied music theory and composition with a piano major.
"The piano is my first major instrument," said Laraaji in an interview with Popdust. "My relationship was one as kinesthetic… As a percussion instrument, I would play [the piano] rhythmically, but mostly taking it as an instrument of therapy, for release, celebration, and expression."
During college, he began exploring comedy as an outlet—a journey that led him to the comedy club circuits of New York City. In the 70s he worked at Aquarius Coffee Shop in Brooklyn, underwent a spiritual awakening, and picked up autoharp, which he began playing in subways and around the city. One day, Brian Eno spotted him in Washington Square Park and asked to collaborate on part of his Ambient series.
Spending his time at new age shops and psychic bookstores, fed by a deep sense of connection to the divine creative forces that tie us all together, Laraaji has channeled his sensitivity to the universe into creating a great body of music, one that spans dimensions, spectrums, and time. His body of work ranges from transcendent ambient tracks (Essence/Universe) to meditative psychedelia (Unicorns in Paradise) to tantric lullabies to collaborations with East Forest and Ram Dass (Like Taking Off An Old Shoe AKA Death), but ultimately Sun Piano might be his most parsed-down and distilled work, making it a unique departure and return.
Recording Sun Piano presented an opportunity to "[dive] deep into channeling," he said. "I feel very united with creation in general when I'm in deep creativity. Being spontaneous is a way of being constantly in the present moment, constantly meeting wonder after wonder."
As someone who has spent his life pursuing laughter and music, Laraaji knows a thing or two about time. If some of his music is sonic time traveling, a journey through sound, Sun Piano seems to lean towards a sense of presence and stillness. The piano exists both out of time and perfectly in the moment; it seems to ask the listener to pause, to simply appreciate the feeling of the sun, and perhaps to honor the momentousness of the body and world as it is, not as it could be.
If some of his other music is a transcendental journey to other worlds, Sun Piano seems to be about this one. Some of the tracks, like "Embracing This," are more hymn-like and sparkling, while others are more emotional and abstract, like "Hold Onto the Vision," but all bear Laraaji's distinct touch as well as the distinct sound of the piano he plays on—a piano that sounds layered with time but not burdened by it.
Other standouts include "Lifting Me," a song that feels like rising up out of a pond after a long time underneath, or like tentatively embracing love despite the risk.
Halting and arhythmic, sometimes sprawling to great floods and other times distilling itself down to simple chords and progressions, Sun Piano is a beautiful testament to the piano as an instrument and to music as a method of communication with the divine.
Watch a short documentary about "Sun Piano" here and stay tuned for an upcoming podcast interview with Laraaji.
Listen to Sun Piano here: