Pete Millward’s Celestial

Celestial was conceived by Peter Millward, but also features a host of great musicians from Hong Kong and across Asia. The first Celestial tracks were released in ’92 and, although they pre-dated the concept of ‘chill-out’ or ‘down-tempo’ music by several years, the idea for Celestial was born: a laid-back mix of Asian sounds over an empyreal electronic dubscape.

Pete — who produces, arranges, mixes, and plays guitar, bass, melodica and keyboards, plus programming and various other bits of audio manipulation — is a long-time Hong Kong resident, with his musical roots in the punk and dub reggae of the ’70s. Indeed the term ‘dub’ here has more in common with masters such as Dennis Bovell (Blackbeard), Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Scientist.

Musicians involved in Celestial over the years include Sunny Yeung (shakuhachi master), Eugene Pao (Asia’s top jazz guitarist), Hsin Hsiao Hung (Hong Kong’s #1 erhu player), Sur Sudha (the musical ambassadors of Nepal), and Eddie Chung — also a partner of Drum Music and producer and deejay with 24 Herbs.

The album ‘Return To The DubStation 返嗒’ saw the addition of kora player Hisaki Yasuda, vocalist Kana Kobayashi and percussionist Kumi Masunaga (of DrumJam) to the line-up.