RAMU stands for ‘Random Access Musical Universe’, Mickey Hart's personal database and, as if it were ever in doubt, what he has pulled out for this project is simply phenomenal. Hart was one of the two drummer-percussionists and major members of Grateful Dead. Since 2015 he has pursued that musical tradition in the most commercially successful of the subsequent splinter groups, Dead & Co, fronted by three members of the Grateful Dead – namely him, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir – and guitarist John Mayer. RAMU is another kind of beast altogether, though it too is of a lineage traceable to Hart's 1972 debut solo album Rolling Thunder. And that is high praise. RAMU takes sampling, sound collage, looping and manipulated sound to adventuresome new heights.

The opening track, ‘Auctioneers’, weaves in field recordings of a tobacco auctioneer and a longshoreman, respectively from 1944 and 1948 made by Herbert Halpert and Alan Lomax and John Becker. He sets this in a soundscape of varied percussion from him, Jason Hann on traps and Zakir Hussain on tabla. Gamelan builds the bridge to ‘Wayward Son’ – a new composition from Hart and the Dead's principal lyricist, Robert Hunter. Elsewhere, Hart constructs an instrumental tribute, co-credited to Jerry Garcia and himself, from recordings of Garcia on synth guitar. ‘Wine Wine Wine’ includes Charles Lloyd. (Lloyd guested with the Dead in 1967 and there is YouTube studio footage of Lloyd and Hart circa 2015.) What emerges from the sound collage is extraordinary. There is a fluidity and rhythmicality to this project that is breathtaking.

It even has an anti-Trump song (‘Big Bad Wolf’), co-written and sung by Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball of the New Orleans-based Tank and the Bangas. Can't praise its imagination and visions enough.