Various Artists: A New Day; The Laya Project Remixed (EarthSync)

In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami which swept across large tracts of Asia, music producer Patrick Sebag and others visited the regions to record and film local musicians.

This became the Laya Project CD/DVD (reviewed here with some questions asked about the ethics of the thing, given it seemed no money went back to the people to help them rebuilt their lives).

Again, with this 22-track double disc remix of many of the original pieces, there doesn't appear to be any portion of the profits going back -- not that I can see from the album or on the EarthSync website.

As I said previously though, not everything needs to have a charitable basis, but you might have thought in this instance . . .

Anyway, here are some of those glorious sounds remixed by the likes of Pitch Black, Bhakti Brothers, Bombay Dub Orchestra, Karsh Kale, Sufi Dubstars, Nicodemus and others.

The source material on the original album was so rich (if rather lost in Sebag's layering of synth beds in many places) that to simply let that come through -- as the Bhakti Brothers remix of Glorious Sun and  Eastern Spirit's take on Hai La Sa, to mention just two, do here -- makes the ambient-world music crossover absolutely enchanting and evocative.

Pathaan's Sunrise in Injumbakam opens with some glorious pre-dawn tension, and Chris Zippel's take on the title track is a drone landscape which rides a beat like a donkey cart.

As before there is still some of that Deep Forest cultural appropriation going on which makes for interesting but ultimately stateless music (the dub-inflected Muliya in the Shaman's remix, Bombay Dub Orchestra's shapeless Waterside Tales, Desert Dwellers' rolling Sunset in Akkari, Ambergris' dancefloor manoeuvre on Touare). 

But again, as before, some of this is quite transporting -- and certainly plays away quietly in the background as effectively exotic aural wallpaper of the nicest kind.