This collaboration between trumpeter
Toshinori Kondo and bassist/producer
Bill Laswell is an interesting fusion of the spiritual and the musical that ends up being more interesting musically than spiritually. The first three of its four long and untitled tracks consist of rich
ambient atmospheres created by
Laswell and
Kondo, into which are woven recorded excerpts of speeches by the
Dalai Lama on the subjects of life, space, and death. The
"Life" and
"Death" tracks both feature
Laswell's typically melodic and funky basslines bumping along under
Kondo's sometimes-heavily treated trumpet lines; the
"Space" track is arrhythmic but no less lovely. The problem with these three tracks is not the music, but the spoken-word content, which tends toward inarguable banalities like "Time is always moving" and "As human beings, this planet is our only home." Surely the recorded archives of the
Dalai Lama could have yielded more enlightening tidbits than these. The album's final and longest track consists of 14 minutes of
instrumental ambience so gauzily insubstantial as to be almost inaudible. Not bad stuff, but hardly essential. ~ Rick Anderson