Raga for Angry Hornets

Lots of musicians collect instruments and genres from Asia and assemble them into cosmopolitan dance tracks or ambient fare with the inevitable reductions and silly juxtapositions. Tibbetts yokes Asian instrumental sounds and percussive patterns with a way of thinking about music that isn't obviously derivative of East or West. The result is an album of borderless compositions that comes close to a true world music open-ended enough to find an audience just about anywhere on the globe, depending, of course, on the amount of slack you're willing to cut him. And then there's the wasp attack, and the irony that a man whose guitar playing resembles a monstrous cloud of hornets should fall victim to the stinger and tumble to the ground. It sort of serves him right for Horse.