Nirvana Is Peace the debut album from Wellington native and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Barnao’s project Peace Love Perfection – a 50 minute trip around psychedelia, EDM, jazz and mysticism. These are mostly instrumentals with low key dance grooves or classic jazz rhythms, Rhodes pianos, retro synths, funk bass lines walking across octaves, claves, shakers and central to the picture, Barnao’s inspired saxophone playing. The soundscape is the stuff of nu-age jazz, lounge music and house music with bits of spacerock …. quite a mix. If you can imagine (somehow) a Saint Germaine dance remix with John Coltrane on sax, Ray Charles on Rhodes, Richard Wright doing some early Pink Floyd synthesizer madness and a drum machine with hand claps – maybe that gets somewhere close. 

The set begins with I Am Cosmic Love (all the titles are like this), a foot tapping dance tune heavy with percussion and wah wah synths and with Barnao’s sax showcased from the start (Barnao has said of this song “I am made out of love, by love, in love”). Following this is The Eternal Mystic Knot, with some ensemble sax playing and fusion-style keys (“I am an infinite cosmic being that has no beginning or ending”). Next is Zodiac, another smooth EDM track with jazz influences (“The solar system is a spaceship”). And it continues thus. On the face of it, all this could certainly set the mood in the opening stages of some late night and sophisticated dance scene in an expensive wine bar. At a deeper level, its clearly symptomatic of Barnao’s own awakening and spirituality, about which he makes no secret. He’s studied and Zen Buddhism, Gnosticism and Theosophy to name just a few, and has said the record was made with a view to passing on spiritual insights through electromagnetic resonances.

If it’s not trite or overly-reductivist to reduce a type of music down to a single word, then this is mood music – music whose dominant effect is the broad landscape it creates and that you inhabit, rather than any particular details you might pick out. Initially it seemed to me perfectly designed for dark corners and couches of some late night venue popular with sophisticated drinkers. Perhaps it is, but there is more too. The intent behind Nirvana Is Peace seems more to create a mood and landscape of spirituality and reflection, perhaps through dancing or time with friends, socializing, taking chances, being present in the now. To that extent this record seems to be a success from start to finish:  the type of record to put on from start to finish – when was the last time you did that? – and see where it takes you.

• 1
  Head Like A Hole
• 2
  Horror Story
• 3
  Fraser Ross
• 4
  Fur Patrol
• 5
  Michelle Rounds
• 6
  L.A.B.
• 7
  The Boondocks
• 8
  Late to Chelsea
• 9
  Springloader
• 10
  Baconfoot

• 
  Nadia Reid @ Loons, Lyttelton - 16/11/2024
• 
  Pull Down The Sun @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024
• 
  Elidi @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024
• 
  Infinity Ritual @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024

• 1
  APT.
  ROSÉ And Bruno Mars
• 2
  DIE WITH A SMILE
  Lady Gaga And Bruno Mars
• 3
  BIRDS OF A FEATHER
  Billie Eilish
• 4
  TASTE
  Sabrina Carpenter
• 5
  I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY
  Gracie Abrams
• 6
  ESPRESSO
  Sabrina Carpenter
• 7
  SAILOR SONG
  Gigi Perez
• 8
  LOSE CONTROL
  Teddy Swims
• 9
  A BAR SONG (TIPSY)
  Shaboozey
• 10
  GOOD LUCK, BABE!
  Chappell Roan

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