Devendra Banhart, Noah Georgeson – Refuge (Blue Vinyl)

In 2020, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson set out to create a record unlike anything they had made before: an ambient album that would be both a refuge from a suddenly frightened world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two artist friends. The plan worked out. Refuge is coming in 2021.

Banhart and Georgeson wrote 13 songs separately for it during the Corona pandemic, recorded them and finally put them together.

But, although the album was recorded in 2020, its roots go back much further to the beginning of their friendship and beyond to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhood. Devendra grew up in Venezuela, while Noah hails from Nevada City, California. And when the two musicians met, they found they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s: a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita, one of the central scriptures of Hinduism, and the Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the flavours of health food stores and the sound of new age labels like Windham Hill Records.

Noah, who worked as a producer and mixer for artists like Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, sat at the controls as co-producer of Devendra's album "Cripple Crow" in 2005. This is where their collaboration and friendship originated.

The idea for "Refuge" eventually came about while working on Banhart's 2019 album "Ma". Inspired by both memories of the past and the needs of the present, "Refuge" has become an album with a contemplative, therapeutic quality.

Banhart comments, "We hope to create a sense of comfort and coming back to the moment. It's really important to have a bit of space between us and our fears and impulses. What you do with that space is up to you."

Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson certainly fill that space with songs full of profound, meditative beauty that leave the listener with a sense of peace and renewal.

If you want to see for yourself, you can listen to the songs "In A Cistern" and "Into Clouds".