Night + Day

With their debut album winning a Grammy for Best New Age Album back in 2019, the sophomore release from this LA-based quartet of composers and musicians from Canada, Iran, Israel and the US have a lot to live up to. For the most part this double album, divided almost equally into nighttime and daytime parts, hits the mark with 13 tracks that combine deeply atmospheric, cinematic soundscapes with beguiling Sufi mysticism. There’s a languorous sensuality to the seven nighttime tracks that, being blunt, can border on the sleepy side at times, but the daytime part wakes up and shines brightly with deft musicianship from master of the santoor (hammered dulcimer) Hamid Saeidi and stellar work from Lili Haydn who, having played with everyone from Herbie Hancock to Robert Plant, has been described as ‘the Jimi Hendrix of the violin’ (by George Clinton, no less). The uplifting ‘100 Ways to Kiss the Ground’ takes its name from a Rumi poem and is inspired by the bansuri playing of Hindustani classical flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia, but the highlight of this ‘day’ comes right at the end in the form of the spiritually euphoric final track, which is called, fittingly, ‘Dream’.