Rafiq Bhatia: Environments

Rafiq Bhatia is the rare guitarist who is interested in both new frontiers for his instrument and its melodic core. Bhatia’s solo practice actually predates his membership in Son Lux, the trio he fully joined in 2014 and helped turn into an adventurous and athletic outfit, where subtlety and scale counted in equal measure. After signing to ANTI- Records for albums of his own, Bhatia’s focus turned to using the studio as a primary instrument, his guitar serving as a compositional and textural anchor for cinematic music that summoned, say, the aggression of Ben Frost or the intricacy of Tortoise raised online. His 2020 EP, Standards Vol. 1, cannily used that suggestive jazz title as a feint, his haunted electronic soundscapes (often sans guitar) recalling the early ‘90s work of Brian Eno as he transmogrified “In a Sentimental Mood” and “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.”

Bhatia returns to the guitar in a brilliantly different context on Environments, the 2025 debut of a new trio alongside Son Lux drummer Ian Chang and trumpeter (and The Westerlies cofounder) Riley Mulherkar. The album’s expansive pieces are entirely improvised, their titles of volcanology or aquatic motion alluding to the spaces this deeply intuitive and responsive band summon. Bhatia has never seemed so open to explore his instrument, like the way he pivots between sub-bass manipulation and transfixing jazz chords during “Aviary I | Sunrise” or shifts from an exquisite melody to broken fragments of it during “Clearing, Crickets.” With Mulherkar and Chang, Bhatia seems able to see the terror and wonder of the world around him and transmit it into sound, to render our space in vivid new sounds.