Michael Robinson: Mian Ki Malhar (Azure Miles Records)

Strictly based on the structural underpinnings of the raga commemorating the monsoon rains, Michael Robinson’s Mian Ki Malhar encompasses a profoundly spacious quality. A sense of organically evolving time pervades on the macro level, contrasting the jagged quantization of computerized precision. Robinson does an admirable job in replicating certain corporeal nuances of real-world instruments, however this certainly isn’t Robinson’s primary objective. By the half way point of “Vilambit, Madhya & Drut Gats,” the music has already swelled to a frenzy that is marvelously sustained until the end of the disc. As with all of Robinson’s releases the unique packaging, in this case a vividly colored silk-screened pattern on handmade Japanese paper, is equally exquisite as the music contained on the CD.

- NewMusicBox (March, 2003)