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Ambient composer Laraaji returns to the center to talk zither, technology and performance

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On Friday night, the influential ambient music composer Laraaji will perform at the Highland Park Ebell Club. The artist, who first gained international attention when the producer and composer Brian Eno happened upon him performing on the zither in New York City, has issued dozens of instrumental recordings.

In recent years Laraaji’s music, which he composes to guide meditation sessions, has been heralded by a new generation of electronic and acoustic artists.

The renewed interest was partially the result of a few essential collections of his work issued by the respected All Saints imprint, as well as the appearance of Laraaji’s “Unicorns in Paradise” on “I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America, 1950-1990,” an acclaimed 2013 collection issued by Light in the Attic Records.

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Recently, the Los Angeles experimental electronic label Leaving Records has reissued a number of Laraaji’s recordings on cassette, the format on which they were originally released.

The artist spoke to The Times in advance of the concert, which will also feature Inga and Matthewdavid’s Mindflight. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How has the way you composed music changed over the years?

In the beginning, composing would consist of sitting down at the keyboard and writing out the musical scale or the musical progressions or melodies. Now, I more or less find a scale or a mode or a harmonic atmosphere, especially with open tuned zithers. I will drop into a more focused, meditative state and let feeling wash up and let that tuning of the zither reflect that mood. I let the music just unfold without thinking of where it is going to go. It’s more of a free flow, spontaneous, trusting, intuitive way of composing.

In my beginning years, I would try and map out where I’m going. Now I let a feeling or a contemplative atmosphere be my intention to hold that space and let the music unfold. Just gently reflect and hold that space. And perhaps this is getting more into what the term ambient means. A music that allows the emotion or the thinker to reside within or float within and environment. A harmonic or an atmospheric environment suggested by the music.

Was there more planning when you were first composing?

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Yes, and also notating where I wanted to return to on paper, so that it becomes a lead sheet or a score. Sometimes the scores were sketches where there would be space and room to breathe compositionally. But now I just trust tuning the instrument to an inspiring, atmospheric chord or scale, do some yoga, some breathing and positive thought and the cumulative energy of that experience.

Sometimes I do it before performance or sometimes just before I am ready to record. It’s called alignment and attunement. It’s not looking at any outer scores or any direction. Letting the direction unfold out of the moment-to-moment.

You recently released an album with Cameron Stallones, who performs as Sun Araw. How was that recording made?

“Professional Sunflow” is a compilation of tracks from two different venue performances during our tour called “The Play Zone” in Europe about two years ago. One of the performances was in Lausanne [Switzerland], and the second one was in Leipzig, Germany. Cameron did the final editing, as he was careful enough to collect the available tracks from those performances. He along with Steven at [Superior] Viaduct edited and brought forth this compilation to LP.

The performance would open with about 20 minutes or a half an hour of Sun Araw doing their solo. I would come out after 30 minutes and overlap and do spontaneous improvisation for 30 minutes or so, and then they would depart the stage and I would be left to do my solo. The tracks that arrived are from that improvisational midsection of our collaboration tour. That involved myself performing with electric zither, voice and percussion, Cameron with guitar, keyboard synthesizer and effects and Alex Gray with computer performance.

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How have advances in technology affected the way that you perform?

It’s interesting, because not only the advances in technology but the cost of flying equipment around the globe has caused me to downsize. My vision was to perform with synthesizer along with my music, but because of the extra baggage fees and all that I have come down to micro-synthesizers. Nano synthesizers — small, handheld — basically that I can download onto my iPad mini.

They’re very well worth it to plug in a very small controlling keyboard which allows me to be lightweight compact and portable, which is a theme that I incorporate in my travels early on in life. So that the iPad, synthesizer and nature sounds — all of these applications in this very portable device have allowed me to become this more expanded, one-person sound orchestra.

Also, the electronics that I like to work through with the zither to create sound coloring and sound painting have become more high-quality and become affordable and smaller. I used go into a very high and studio in the ‘80s and be able to play through sound effects units that were too large and too pricey for me to play out on the street or carry with me on the road. Now, the same high-quality, high-performance effects units I am able to pack in my backpack and carry around with me now.

Do you think anything is lost in the transition between electronic and acoustic?

I think something is lost if you omit the acoustic. I include the acoustic. I like to have microphones over my zither when I’m performing to have a clear acoustic sound available in my mix. I have been exposed to writings [that] say that acoustic music includes more of the harmonics and overtones that are part of the healing impact of acoustic sound. It affects the nervous system and affects the listening.

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However, digitally recorded sound, I feel, is equal to a digital recording. If you take a digital recording of someone playing acoustic violin, you can download that instrument and make it into a sample. Played on the keyboard, the synthesizer or computer music would have close to if not equal to a healing impact if it can convey harmonics and overtones of the original sound.

But there’s room for questioning, because being in the room with someone playing electric violin, acoustic violin or an acoustic upright bass, you feel the impact when you hear the sound. It’s sensual, it’s embracing. Some say digital recordings are a little too brittle or two sterile, and I haven’t listened close enough to make that decision on my own.

I’m not sure I could pass the blind listening test anymore.

Some of the arguments of the people who are gravitating towards LPs are that LPs and analog sound is that there is a preference over digital CD format — and even the tape cassettes, which seem to be resurging.

That was my next question. I know Matthewdavid and Leaving Records have issued some of your cassettes?

Yes, those were the results of me going into my suitcases and boxes and coming up with early cassette-only releases, which I released out of my living space and sold at concerts or sold to New Age bookstores in the New York area. I gave him quite a few cassettes for him to browse through, and he selected probably six or seven, three of which he already released as “All in One Peace,” and the next three that he’s about to release, hopefully in September of this year.

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He took responsibility for editing them, getting them cleaned up and getting them in the best listening situation without compromising the original sense of the music. I’ve been very happy with how he’s handled the project, and his deeper level of commitment to the overall energy and the sacred energy of this whole thing of sharing music from that period. It seems like he’s targeted a market that’s interested in this kind of music.

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