Recorded interactions between LARAAJI and Michael Brook are scarce. Though they were both fixtures of the groundbreaking ’80s ambient scene surrounding Brian Eno, their only straightforward studio collaboration is LARAAJI’s Brook-produced 1992 album Flow Goes the Universe. And, until last weekend, their shared stage time had been confined to a series of turn-of-the-’90s tours titled “Opal Evening.” These performances featured sets from renowned multi-instrumentalist and producer Roger Eno and fellow ambient trailblazer Harold Budd, and ended with impromptu jams. Brook recorded these sessions and released two collections of the tracks, but both have since been lost to the realm of forgotten media — giving them the kind of mystique music heads kill for.
The inaugural MEZAME Festival advertised their Sept. 26 LARAAJI x Michael Brook show as a long-awaited Opal Evening sequel. Organized by the team behind the long-running concert series Ambient Church, the festival harnessed the massive acoustics and sacred aesthetics of Saint Bartholomew’s Church in midtown Manhattan; for three days, the Romanesque hall of worship became a stage for composers, producers, sound collagists, and techno DJs.
Promoted as a “rare collaborative performance,” Brook and LARAAJI’s combined hour-and-a-half of aural neuromancy contained a bounty of breathtaking sounds, but only a few minutes of faulty communication between the veteran texturalists. Attendees who came to bask in hours of sublime ambient music got their money’s worth. Those who braved a (mild) nor’easter specifically to witness an epic reunion left unrewarded.
LARAAJI was notably absent when an MC introduced him and Brook at the start of Brook’s set, as if presenting them as a duo. Flying solo, Brook let his guitar howl, glacially layering long tones before bringing synthesized space-age sounds into the mix. They bubbled to the surface, then expanded into cavernous, percussive engines of doom.
Brook separated his set into songs, foregoing continuity for variety and punctuating his most ominous passages with snatches of serenity. His buoyant guitar tone and lush harmonies in these moments recalled a new-age sound he’s cringed at in the past. These flirtations with cushy pop textures might have come off campy out of context, but Brook laced them ingeniously into his largely somber set.
LARAAJI hasn’t reacted as negatively to “new age” as a genre signifier, perhaps because he is a resolutely positive person. Eternally dressed in orange to honor his connection to the sun, he’s one of those rare people whose warm, luminous aura alters every space he enters. Arriving onstage Saturday, this energy played a soft foil to Brook’s endearingly crotchety persona.
As LARAAJI tinkered with his synth collection, Brook plucked a four-note figure and looped it behind slow, expansive chords that produced a sense of synesthesia as they echoed against the church’s stained glass. LARAAJI soon moved to the grand piano a few feet behind his table of gear. Despite his association with the autoharp, he’s a competent multi-instrumentalist, and his technical skill is dwarfed by the emotion he can wring from his medium of choice. Early on, their interpenetrated sound looked to be molding into something transcendent, but their connection disintegrated about halfway through. LARAAJI’s piano runs dissolved into noodlings, and Brook stuck to chords that complemented these unfocused melodies. The experiment faltered, then sputtered to a halt.
LARAAJI is a consummate collaborator, and his performances always seem to end organically, coming to rest with no visible signal between him and his fellow improvisers. On Saturday, Brook stopped playing about two minutes earlier than his stagemate, and although LARAAJI slow-rolled the fadeout smoothly, the set felt abandoned, not complete. Its brevity may have been a preexisting arrangement or a telepathic agreement between the two artists to pull the plug. A transcendent 10 minutes can be worth months of mediocrity, but LARAAJI and Brook showed no more than a spark of the lightning many sources say they captured close to 40 years ago.
After his interlude with Brook, LARAAJI played the ultimate LARAAJI set. His autoharp was plucked, struck, swept circularly by drum brushes, and electronically tweaked. Such alterations might have been subtle in smaller rooms, but the church’s immense interior magnified them tenfold. LARAAJI sang at times, too, sometimes in English, often in a language of his own.
Late in his set, he went back to the piano. His rootless playing was intoxicating this time: Having mesmerized his audience — both sonically and with the magnetic mantra “Space, Awareness, The Present” — he roamed free, leaping from shards of arrhythmic glossolalia to swinging chords that evoked the Great American Songbook. St. Bart’s acoustics accentuated the velvety richness of his voice.
He concluded Saturday afternoon’s proceedings with a return to his autoharp and synths, building a cacophony and then sliding through the sheets of sound. “Space, Awareness, The Present,” he bellowed, letting his words linger amid the noise before striking a chime to break the spell.
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