Although Yusef Lateef was a noted pioneer of improvised music that drew extensively on ‘other sounds’ from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, he also made music that was given the once dubious epithet ‘New Age’, though it might be more appropriate to say he was in the more credible realm of ambient sounds. Percussion maestro Adam Rudolph, who played extensively with Lateef in the latter stages of his career, has trodden vaguely similar paths in his solo work, and this intriguing encounter with multi-reed virtuoso Bennie Maupin is one of the most fitting tributes that he could pay to Lateef, a timeless musical ‘universalist’. The songs they create here are rhapsodic, almost like digital age canticles. Long, swooning trails of sound that blur the line between acoustic and electronic sources; smears of synthesizer chords that bring colour to the palette but still retain breathing space; whispers and hums that add to the ceremonial character of the performance, as if the two men were pilgrims at a shrine or temple: this work has a deeply meditative character that attests to the self-possession Maupin has shown on innovative work with anybody from Miles Davis to Marion Brown. The breadth of experience Maupin and Rudolph have acquired, since debuting in the 1960s and 70s respectively, shows in all their judicious subtleties as well as vivid flourish, and the result is music that has the gravitas and solemnity that are entirely apt for a subject like the once in a lifetime Brother Yusef.