Circle Of Celebration, a collaboration between composer Christopher Bono’s NOUS ensemble, ambient music mainstay Laraaji and fellow sound healing musician Arji OceAnanda, is the fourth and final album to emerge from the NOUS: A Musical Rite recording sessions that took place at Dreamland Studios, in Hurley NY. The album will be released by Our Silent Canvas on November 12, 2021.

Spending time in the company of Circle of Celebration is a transcendent experience. The album has a warm, enveloping tonality that forces deep and uplifting contemplation. It’s impossible not to be moved by Laraaji’s distinctive zither technique on pieces like ‘In This Light’, where his playing is surrounded by Christopher’s plaintive piano melodies and tranquil water sounds akin to suikinkutsu.

Elsewhere, a beatific, gauzy almost dubby warmth pervades the naïve melodies on ‘Of Common Origin’, while the sudden introduction of Laraaji and Arji’s arresting laughter ushers in a truly heart-warming conclusion to the piece; the gently phasing, subtly percussive opening piece, ‘Into Nousness’ and the mystique-heavy ‘Through The Veil’ seem to embody the idea of a searching, open-minded approach to creation.

Circle Of Celebration is fronted by three beings whose lives have been forever changed as a result of their own unique journeys through sound, meditation and Eastern practices, and yet it is an album that can be appreciated irrespective of where you find yourself on your own spiritual path. The album is grounded by the spontaneous rhythms and diverse textures created by the talented ensemble of musicians that encircled these three friends throughout this extraordinary recording session.