When the producer/composer/Buddhist/American sweetheart Arthur Russell’s World of Echo came out in 1986, it sold so poorly that Russell suggested his label put a sticker on it: “UNINTELLIGIBLE”. It’s funny, but it also gets at the essence of what makes Russell’s music so special. Culled from the seemingly infinite tapes made in the year leading up to Echo’s release, the gorgeous cello-and-vocal abstractions of Picture of Bunny Rabbit capture the serenity of a mind that doesn’t trap its thoughts so much as watch them continuously evolve, treading lightly through a forest of echo and reverb as half-words gather into lines gather into songs (“Not Checking Up”) and gestures toward permanence dissolve into mist (“The Boy With a Smile”). It’s intimate, it’s uncanny—it’s the sound of something sitting right next to you, maybe closer.