Music From the Temple of Light

Best known as a world music journalist and biographer of Manu Chao, Peter Culshaw is also a gallivanting adventurer. This album, funded by selling his old friend Malcolm McLaren's Mercedes and placing astute football bets, was recorded across the world from Mumbai to (pre-Russian-invasion) Odesa. And it’s an ecstatic, mystical experience. Indian classical music weaves into Brazilian rhythm, Culshaw’s rippling jazz-inflected piano, found sounds, and a general blissful sense of the numinous. Never just fusion for fusion’s sake, like the very best fourth world or global jazz, it feels like music beamed from a better future.