Some Pink Floyd vibes on this one. Somewhere several small furry animals are beginning to gather in a cave and groove.
Today, Rafiq Bhatia announces ‘Environments’, his first full-length solo album since 2018’s ‘Breaking English’. Coming out September 12th on ANTI-, ’Environments’ celebrates Bhatia’s full-circle return to improvised music after a decade-long foray into meticulous studio-based constructions.
Opening track “Aviary I | Sunrise” was recorded in one take. A collaboration with trumpeter Riley Mulherkar and Bhatia’s Son Lux-bandmate, drummer Ian Chang, this first dispatch feels like a microcosm of the full album, in which the trio improvises to conjure worlds of sound that bloom, melt, crackle and combust. Using their instruments to evoke a forest floor awakening, the trio’s accumulating chorus of intimate actions creates an ecosystem, enveloping Bhatia’s melodic gestures in birdsong. Dimming to a pre-dawn glow, the second half of the piece builds patiently but undeniably, as waves of fraying guitar, waterfalls of trumpet, and avalanches of drums are sublimated into a single sound that heralds the rising sun. It’s an otherworldly portrait of the world around us. The track is shared online today alongside a live in-studio video.
Those who look closely at the album’s LP sleeve will notice a quiet mantra inscribed across its upper fold: “Birds only sing when they feel safe.” “I was struck when I heard a scientist theorize that this may be the evolutionary reason why birdsong puts us at ease,” Bhatia recalls. “The suggestion that we’ve internalized another species’ litmus for safety into an experience within our own bodies… that’s highly interconnected. I think these pieces reflect a desire to remember—to physically experience—how, no matter how much humans subdivide time, it’s still moving at nature’s pace. To create a world within that makes us feel how inseparable we are from the world around us.”
Using sound to evoke a sense of place feels like a natural outgrowth for Bhatia given his recent forays into film scoring—as a member of the band Son Lux, he earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations for the band’s score for 2023’s Best Picture-winning film ’Everything Everywhere All At Once‘, for which they collaborated with David Byrne, André Benjamin, Mitski, and Randy Newman. The trio also scored this season’s critically acclaimed and surprising Marvel blockbuster ’Thunderbolts*’ and recently announced their involvement in the new Mahershala Ali-starring ‘Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother’.
But it was ‘On Blue’, a collaboration with the Thai auteur and Cannes Palm d’Or winning filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, that most clearly inspired Bhatia’s evolution on ‘Environments’, with Weerasethakul’s dreamlike elongation of time and use of natural sound leaving an indelible mark on the album. A live performance of ‘On Blue’ will be featured at the inaugural AIR Festival in Aspen, CO this July alongside works by Matthew Barney, André 3000, Glenn Ligon and others.
Drawing on his jazz background that has previously included collaborations with Arooj Aftab, Ambrose Akinmusire, Dave Douglas, Marcus Gilmore, Mary Halvorson, Billy Hart, Kassa Overall, Cécile McLorin Salvant and more, Bhatia marks his return to improvised music with a trio of trusted friends and collaborators on ‘Environments’. Chang, contributor of acoustic and electronic percussion, was an obvious choice – over a decade, the friends have explored defying the expectations of their instruments together, and his signature off-kilter swagger of drumming is as comfortable in producing hush or roar. Trumpeter Mulherkar, whose acclaimed debut album Bhatia co-produced, brings a breath-driven approach to slowly developing sounds and avian flourishes that are naturally at home on this uncharted voyage.
“I think we’re all looking for expressive gestures on our instruments that evoke these things heard in more studio-type constructions,” Bhatia says. “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.”
‘Environments’ will be released on September 12th via ANTI-. Pre-order/pre-save here.
