Back in the wildly creative period of the psychedelic '60s, surrealist/avant-garde artist
Brion Gysin took his friend
Brian Jones of
The Rolling Stones into the Moroccan foothills to hear and record The Master Musicians of a village called Joujouka. For a week they were possessed by a seductive form of trance music that has facilitated astral travel and celestial visitations for centuries.
The Next Dream, produced by maverick musician
Bill Laswell, is a solo project by
Bachir Attar, the chief of these musicians. Playing shepherd's flute, gimbri (three-stringed goatskin lute) and ghaita (a droning seven-holed Moroccan folk oboe),
Bachir is joined by an African percussionist and reedman
Maceo Parker, who played for years with
James Brown. The results are intoxicatingly surreal, and otherworldly.