(Produced by Brian Eno)

Laraaji’s glistening album “Ambient 3: Day of Radiance” has from the beginning been considered an outlier. Though widely celebrated at that the time of its release in 1980 -- as the third installment of Brian Eno’s emerging ambient music series (Ambient 1-4) -- the album also brought with it an aura of mystification. Where did it fit in? An uncharted synthesis of resonating zither textures, interlocking, hammered rhythms and 3-D sound treatments (courtesy of Eno) “Day of Radiance” seemed to push open many doors at once, ambient music being only one of them.

In an exclusive interview for Glitterbeat’s reissue of “Day of Radiance” Laraaji commented: "Down the line I noticed that this album was sort of separated from the rest of his (Eno’s) ambient albums, and there was some debate whether this was really “ambient” in relationship to the other albums in the ambient series."

Though there are certainly aspects of the album that find sonic common ground with other Eno-related “ambient” projects (the tracks “Meditation #1 & “Meditation #2” in particular) the album is not easily boxed into a singular genre. “Day of Radiance” also mines the ethereal spiritualism of late 70’s New Age music (of which Laraaji is considered a pioneer), the harmonic and rhythmic repetitions of American classical minimalism (Terry Riley & Steve Reich) and traditional global sounds from India and Java (particularly gamelan music). And while Laraaji never explicitly embraced the “Fourth World” theories of fellow visionary and Eno collaborator Jon Hassell, “Day of Radiance” echoes a kindred exploratory exoticism.

Born Edward Larry Gordon, in Philadelphia in 1943, by the time Laraaji entered a Soho studio in 1980 to record in collaboration with Eno, he had already navigated many musical worlds and creative pursuits........
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Laraaji’s glistening album “Ambient 3: Day of Radiance” has from the beginning been considered an outlier. Though widely celebrated at that the time of its release in 1980 -- as the third installment of Brian Eno’s emerging ambient music series (Ambient 1-4) -- the album also brought with it an aura of mystification. Where did it fit in? An uncharted synthesis of resonating zither textures, interlocking, hammered rhythms and 3-D sound treatments (courtesy of Eno) “Day of Radiance” seemed to push open many doors at once, ambient music being only one of them.

In an exclusive interview for Glitterbeat’s reissue of “Day of Radiance” Laraaji commented: "Down the line I noticed that this album was sort of separated from the rest of his (Eno’s) ambient albums, and there was some debate whether this was really “ambient” in relationship to the other albums in the ambient series."

Though there are certainly aspects of the album that find sonic common ground with other Eno-related “ambient” projects (the tracks “Meditation #1 & “Meditation #2” in particular) the album is not easily boxed into a singular genre. “Day of Radiance” also mines the ethereal spiritualism of late 70’s New Age music (of which Laraaji is considered a pioneer), the harmonic and rhythmic repetitions of American classical minimalism (Terry Riley & Steve Reich) and traditional global sounds from India and Java (particularly gamelan music). And while Laraaji never explicitly embraced the “Fourth World” theories of fellow visionary and Eno collaborator Jon Hassell, “Day of Radiance” echoes a kindred exploratory exoticism.

Born Edward Larry Gordon, in Philadelphia in 1943, by the time Laraaji entered a Soho studio in 1980 to record in collaboration with Eno, he had already navigated many musical worlds and creative pursuits........
more