The Garden Of Mirrors

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Stephan Micus is a unique explorer of sonorities, wandering the world to study instruments from a host of heritages. His work is marked by a simultaneous interest in the instruments' distinctive properties and original uses and his own vision. For the nine-part Garden of Mirrors, Micus has added to his instrumental palette with bolombatto and sinding, two lower-register West African harps with attached tin rattles. These are used here to accompany vocals or are joined in various configurations with a complement of ethnic flutes--including Japanese shakuhachi, Balinese suling, Egyptian nay, and an Irish tin whistle--as well as steel drums, and Micus's voice is overdubbed to a 20-member chorale on three tracks. The results are often hypnotic, combining hyper-resonant instruments with static five-tone scales and chanted micro-melodies.

On "Passing Cloud," the shakuhachi wafts over a slowly pulsing field of four steel drums and two sinding, while "Gates of Fire" uses bowed sinding to add introductory menace to a stately processional orchestra of percussion, steel drums, and a dozen overdubs of the various flutes. On "Flowers in Chaos," a single high-pitched suling expands to 22, arriving like a flock of exotic birds. It's not just the cross-cultural content of these instruments that makes the music distinctive. Their sounds are close to nature, whether evoking birds or rivers, wind or rain. Micus's wordless singing never mimics a single culture; the pieces are as apt to suggest Native American music as the South African townships or India. In Micus's meditations, technology can turn the one voice into many, or merge diverse elements into a united dreamscape. --Stuart Broomer