RAFIQ BHATIA : 'The Voice Of Love' - Angelo Badalamenti cover from EP by Oscar nominated Son Lux member
RAFIQ BHATIA
THE VOICE OF LOVE
[feat. CHRIS PATTISHALL]
new single
out 22.01.25
(ANTI-)
listen
included on
EACH DREAM, A MELTING DOOR
new EP
out 21.02.25
Avant-garde American musician, composer, guitarist and producer Rafiq Bhatia has announced a new EP today created in collaboration with pianist Chris Pattishall. Entitled ‘Each Dream, A Melting Door’, Bhatia and Pattishall improvise across the EP’s five tracks to conjure environments of sound that evolve at nature’s pace, but - crucially - also carry its unpredictable stakes. Unfurling seamlessly like a short film, the result is sculptural, sleepwalking music that rewards patience and deep listening, illuminating fleeting pathways towards the journey inward.
‘Each Dream, A Melting Door’ is Bhatia’s first solo release since co-scoring 2023’s Academy Award-winning Best Picture ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ with his bandmates in Son Lux, where they earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations for their head-spinning score.
The EP’s closing track, ‘The Voice of Love’, is available now. Their version of the haunting piece written by soundtrack composer Angelo Badalamenti for the film ‘Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me’, and transcribed by Pattishall from watching a video of Badalamenti playing it, a hushed, elegiac opening gives way to a throbbing, ecstatic energy. Both manic and calm, it is a beguilingly transcendent statement, made even more prescient with the passing of Twin Peaks creator David Lynch.
“David Lynch was always searching,” explains Bhatia, reflecting on one of his primary artistic influences. “Rather than treating abstraction as some sort of stuffy, elitist realm, he saw it as a way to invite us all in, recognising that ambiguity can make space for each of us to more fully embody our own experience. He spoke out against the toxic notion of the tortured artist, reminding us time and again that art flows most easily from a place of health, curiosity, playfulness and patience. He emphasised that art need not reflect the artist, but seemed to also understand that in certain ways it always and inevitably will. The timing of this release - which was set months ago - feels uncanny, not to mention the fact that it was a video that circulated on the day of Angelo Badalamenti's passing that first inspired us to record this piece. Ultimately, I'm grateful that we already have a plan in place to honour our hero.”
Listen to ‘The Voice of Love’ HERE.
Bhatia’s previous solo release, ‘Standards, Vol 1’, had seen him collaborate with singer Cécile McLorin Salvant on a spellbinding version of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, while ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ saw he and his bandmates work with the likes of David Byrne, André Benjamin and Mitski. However, his roots with Pattishall stretch back more than twenty years to when the pair became buddies, hanging out and listening to ‘Madvillainy’ together.
An erudite pianist championed early in his career by Wynton Marsalis, Pattishall has long held a fascination with production and sound design, quietly developing a unique electroacoustic approach that resulted in co-producing (alongside Bhatia) the 2024 debut album by trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, as well as co-scoring the Emmy-winning documentary ‘Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’.
“Working together on this new EP felt seamless, as we each brought elements and initial sketches and built the pieces collaboratively,” explains Pattishall. “The pieces weren’t constructed with traditional conventions. As we’ve both spent time investigating electronic music and the physics of sound as well as various strains of improvised music, we were able to communicate in a shared language.”
Indeed, new technological integrations have allowed Bhatia himself to merge a decade developing his electroacoustic composing skills back into his practice as an improvising guitarist, using real-time sampling and manipulation to express and develop multiple worlds of sound at once. As a result, it is easy to forget that everything audible on ‘Each Dream…’ aside from the piano is…guitar. Forwards and in reverse, up and down the octaves, Bhatia multiplies the sound of the instrument, transfiguring it into an orchestra of whistling wind tunnels, booming subsonics, storms of noise and melodic waves that combust and fragment.
“From the first time we tried this together, in a live set at Lincoln Center, I could hear the manipulated sonic tapestries I was constructing refracted back at me through Chris' piano playing,” states Bhatia. “He was finding ways to respond in waves and gestures that felt totally at home with what I was doing, playing an acoustic instrument in a way that recalls the shapes of more electronic music he's been listening to all along. The music came together quite quickly once we decided it needed to exist. Everything was tracked in an afternoon; most of it was the first or maybe second take, and despite its (I think) very meticulously layered feeling, it's all just two people playing together in real time.”
EACH DREAM, A MELTING DOOR
TRACKLISTING
1 Occlusion
2 Vanta
3 Supplicant
4 Ijen
5 The Voice Of Love
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