Inner World

One can imagine Bono’s wrap-around shades turning green with envy when he heard that the New Zealand duo Junelle and Abraham Kunin had persuaded the Dalai Lama to make an album with them. The U2 duet with his Holiness will have to wait and Bono will no doubt deplore the lack of bombast on this elegant album on which the 85-year-old spiritual leader recites mantras and Buddhist teachings over a sympathetically ambient soundbed. “Music can help people in a way that I can’t,” he admits and hopes that these 11 tracks will take his vision of world peace and spiritual harmony to a new audience.

On ‘Compassion’ you can chant ‘om mani padme hum’ along with the great man over meditative strings and flute, or elsewhere you can simply sit back and absorb his words of wisdom over the chiming new age soundtrack that is ‘Humanity’. Anoushka Shankar adds some spine-tingling sitar on the lovely ‘Ama La’ and if you’ve ever wondered what a Tibetan Buddhist piano ballad sounds like, then try ‘Purification’. In places the Kunins’ arrangements sound a little too like out-takes from an Enya album, but overall this is a respectful and dignified insight into an inner world of timeless spirituality.