A cross-cultural synthesis recorded in Montréal, featuring South Indian percussionist Ganesh Anandan, violinist Malcolm Goldstein and improvising guitarist Rainer Wiens, here on prepared guitar. Anandan plays frame drum, tambourines, metallophone, cheng, steel drum, kalimba and paou. On one track, Fra Ma Ga Ra, saxophonist Frank Lozano is added. On Ra Ma — just Rainer Wiens and Malcolm Goldstein, you get the idea — Wiens’s clangorous guitar conversing with Goldstein, whose skittering Improv is far remwed from classical violin. On Fra Ma Ga Ra, the guitarist’s beguiling twanglings set off some raw sax from Lozano. Lullaby concludes the CD with Anandan’s metallophone conjuring sounds of great delicacy, and Goldstein’s violin as close to quiet Iyricism as it’s likely to get.

This album isn’t a violent yoking together of diverse traditions. Each musician listens and responds naturally — and beauty combines with sonic adventurousness to make an enthralling CD.