187: Rafiq Bhatia - Clearing, Crickets

“I wanted the music to feel more like the Earth does when left to its own devices,” Rafiq Bhatia has said of his forthcoming album Environments. With that idea at the centre of it all, Bhatia gently constructed a new world of his own making, eight new songs that "reflect a desire to remember—to physically experience—how, no matter how much humans subdivide time, it's still moving at nature's pace."

A composer, guitarist, and producer, Bhatia is perhaps best known as one of the three members that make up the excellent Son Lux; Oscar-nominated for their Everything Everywhere All at Once soundtrack. On his own terms (though Son Lux bandmate Ian Chang joins him across the new album), Bhatia crafts otherworldly, ambient jazz, gently skewing known-sounds into something altogether unknown, a kaleidoscope of fascinating tone and texture and colour.

The lead track from Environments was staggering, a twelve-minute trip that felt almost too overwhelming to try and describe and define here. New track 'Clearing, Crickets' is altogether more refined but no less evocative – a spacious, textural delight, a gentle blossoming of percussion and horns, always surrounded by the sounds of birds and insects. The sound of a late summer night, bright sunset hues fading into the dark night, the heat close and sticky and oh so palpable.

“I think we’re all looking for expressive gestures on our instruments that evoke these things heard in more studio-type constructions,” Bhatia says of his new work. “I’ve been after this sort of world-building with sound but being able to control and shape it very intentionally and with great care.”

That sense of care and expression carries this song into another realm entirely, or perhaps carries us into the realm it's created. Either way, it's worth the adventure, there have been few more beautiful for a long while.

‘Environments’ is released September 12th via ANTI-, find more details here

A reminder that Episode One of a new GFP radio show dropped yesterday, and you can listen to it right here