Well before Brian Eno recruited Laraaji for the third installment of his epochal Ambient series, 1980’s Day of Radiance, the man born Edward Larry Gordon already had his own fully formed sound. Still, Laraaji’s origin story is often retold through his connection to the British musician. As the story goes, one day in 1978, Eno went walking in Washington Square Park and came upon a man strumming away on a zither. He dropped a note into his case, inviting him to a recording session, the fruit of which became Day of Radiance, his first album under the Laraaji alias.