"Talking about "Environments" - a broad, beautiful new album from the jazz-adjacent guitarist Rafiq Bhatia - is like talking about the weather. Squint your ears at the tech Bhatia uses to make his sunshine and you're talking meteorology. Surrender to his music's big-sky grandeur and it's more like metaphysics. If you're drawn to the uncomplicated verisimilitude in his work - the song with "rain" in its title sounds like rain - you're making chitchat at the bus stop. We needed this, didn't we?"
"For years, Bhatia has been inviting listeners to come to him. On previous albums, he funneled his jazz fluency through layers of production software, resulting in recordings that he describes as "sort of ice sculptural, ship in a bottle types of creations." Now, drawn back into the gravity of the improvisational moment, Bhatia says, "I'm basically merging the two practices,""
Environments consists of panoramic, first-take improvisations recorded with percussionist Ian Chang and trumpeter Riley Mulherkar. The music emphasizes spontaneity and the evocation of place, often conjuring weather-like atmospheres and literal textures such as rain. Guitar performance merges live improvisation with real-time computer processing and instant sampling, allowing sculptural manipulation of freshly generated sounds. Earlier recordings funneled jazz fluency through layered production software into precise, "ice sculptural, ship in a bottle" creations; the new approach blends that sculptural production with the immediacy of improvisation to create large-scale, atmospheric sonic environments.
Read at The Washington Post
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