Laraaji & Lyghte – Celestial Realms (1986) – Album Review

Album: Celestial Realms

Artist: Laraaji & Lyghte

Release Date: 1986

When was the first time you felt truly connected to a feeling or to a thought or to a stirring of the soul? For me, it was the first time I heard Laraaji on the collaborative album “Music for Films III.” The year was 2008 and at the time, I was approaching what would later reveal itself as a significant personal, spiritual, and cultural inflection point, though I lacked the … what’s the word … vocabulary to identify it as such. I only sensed that I was standing near something consequential. The version I go my hands on was a ripped CD of the 2005 reissue, and through all of the beautiful music on that album, it reached its final stop and revealed its true center of gravity: Kalimba – a small, but perfect jewel tucked into the lining of magical record. In my opinion, it’s Laraaji’s finest work. It took me completely by surprise – and there I stood upon the brink of some inward turning. This track was only two minutes and forty seven seconds, but that’s all the time it took for me to feel something I’d never felt before: truly connected to a feeling. Something in my brain popped into place and I was forever in this new world of wonder. From that point forward, it music was different for me. I feel like Laraaji’s work always leaves the listener (aka ME) standing inside a wider, more coherent field of experience.

If it wasn’t for that deep connection I felt with Laraaji then, I wouldn’t be so interested to talk about this rare album Celestial Realms now. This rare gem of an album used to be a bit hard to find and circulated for years as a quietly revered artifact – the one I listened to was a high quality rip from a cassette tape. long aligned with the quieter currents of consciousness, Laraaji joins forces here with Jonathan Goldman, operating under the name Lyghte. It’s just a stunning collaboration. In true Laraaji fashion, there are periods where nothing dramatic is happening on the surface, yet everything feels quietly unstable and elemental underneath. Elemental like some sort of interstellar medium – nebulas or non-specific remnants of a supernova. I feel like I’m being vague here. I struggle to be precise when describing it, but that imprecision is part of the effect. That’s what this music does to me.

The album consists of two extended pieces – Equinox and Celestial Realms. Both seem marked by a deep respect for the instruments involved and for the temporal space required to let sound fully emerge .I’ve returned to this album repeatedly over the last month – sometimes in fragments, sometimes straight through, and each time it has carried the same grounding force. Music like this has always carried this quality for me: a sense that something internal is being tuned, gently and without instruction. A subtle recalibration and for that I am forever indebted to the pioneers of this kind of music.

Laraaji’s zither glows with that familiar warmth and, to my surprise, integrates seamlessly with Lyghte’s reverbed guitar and earth-toned synthesizers. I hate the idea that this tape sat exiled in the New Age section in the back of countless record shops across the country, because it’s so much more than that. There are no cheesy sharp edges, no commercially driven gestures towards a saccharine crescendo – it’s just sustained interaction between the artists and the instruments they chose. You hear fingers on strings, the slight bloom of amplification and the emotional weight that is shaped by artists who trust both their instruments and the time required for them to resonate fully.

Would absolutely recommend this album.