Sumeru is a collective of digital composers and free improvisors comprising Ryoco Kuwajima, Jim Brouwer, Alex Peverett, Chris Gladwin, Richard Harrison and Joe Gilmore. They employ a mixture of acoustic instruments - sitar, singing bowls, flute, thumb pianos and voice, with custom software and filters in a constantly evolving soundscape of sparkling electronics, timbral abstraction, recombinant synthesis and shifting cosmic tones.

"Mount Sumeru is the Axial Mountain at the centre of both the Hindu and the Buddhist conceptions of the Universe. Like all traditional cosmologies these are maps of the entire Universe through all its levels: physical, psychic, and spiritual, and not merely schemes representing the physical world alone, as isolated by modern Western science. Mount Sumeru represents figuratively the Axis Mundi, at once separating and centrally uniting all the worlds or planes of existence. It is symbolised by an island mountain in the Ocean of the Unmanifested Void, surrounded by eight seas and eight mountain ranges. On its peak stands the abode of Taishakuten [Indra, the Hindu Ruler of the Gods], and on each of its sides one of the Guardian Kings of the Four Directions of Space watches over the Universe. The world's encircling storm is Samsara, the universal flux for, like a cyclone, Becoming sweeps around in its ceaseless change all the existences in the Three Worlds: of Desire, of Form, and of Formlessness, since Nirvana alone lies beyond impermanence".

Kuwajima / Peverett / Plank: live at Smallnote.mp3 [23Mb]