Academy Award-nominated composer and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia announces Environments today, his first full-length solo album since 2018’s Breaking English. Coming out September 12, Environments celebrates Bhatia’s full-circle return to improvised music after a decade-long foray into meticulous studio-based constructions. In fact, the opening track ‘Aviary I | Sunrise’ was recorded in one take. Listen to the album version and watch a live in-studio version of the track below:
WATCH/LISTEN
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.
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.”
Praise for Rafiq Bhatia
“Transcending real sound in real time with the unexpected…There aren’t many usual moments in his music.” – Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
“I’m not really sure I’ve ever heard anything quite like this before … Rafiq Bhatia is not a guitarist like any other guitarist you are probably used to listening to…in his hands, his guitar is more like a living, breathing, supernatural creature. He is turning that machine into some sort of mythical beast, and so you hear him growl and twist the sonics in the most mind-bending ways.” – Robin Hilton, NPR Music
“A spellbinding performance … using the guitar as simply part of a wider arsenal of sound production … a surreal electronic dreamscape. ” – WNYC
Rafiq Bhatia
Environments
1. Aviary I | Sunrise
2. Rain On The Canopy | Melting Sky
3. At Midnight On A Black Sand Beach, The Raging Tides Begin To Speak
4. The Sky Breaks Open
5. Glimmers In The Ocean Deep
6. Volcano △
7. Clearing, Crickets
8. Aviary II | Air
