Wally Badarou – Colors Of Silence, 2001

I shared Badarou’s Echoes a while ago, and will probably share Words of a Mountain at some point, but I think his most recent solo release tends to get overlooked. Though the title pegs it as yoga music, there’s very little conventional new age to be found here–it feels more like the hotel lobby music of my dreams. I’ve never used it as a yoga accompaniment, but I have done a lot of deep cleaning with it, and I would imagine this would be great driving music. Alternately playful, tropical, nostalgic, reggae-tinged, meditative, cinematic, and as one would expect, endlessly smooth. Badarou himself seems to be conflicted about the work, citing poor promotion and “intimate” distribution. He disavowed it as an instrumental record, instead calling it a compilation of high-quality demos that were put together quickly for a friend’s project. Nobody needs me to say that Badarou is a genius; this is just a reminder that his wizardry holds fast even under unideal circumstance. (If you also listened to CFCF’s Colours of Life a gazillion times, you’ll love this–the sonic palettes and titles are so akin that I suspect it’s a direct nod.)