Toronto-based pianist and composer John Kameel Farah stunned the world with the release of his achingly emotive and infinitely intricate sophomore album Unfolding earlier this year. Drawing on influences from his background in classical, jazz, Arabic music and free improvisation, and expertly seasoning them with peerless electronic drum programming, Farah is breaking down barriers towards creating a more natural and intuitive musical dialogue between man and his technology.

"I’m struggling to get that fluidity," Farah told me over the phone, "and I think a lot of electronic music people struggle with that, maybe even going out of their way to make things lopsided or uneven. My piano playing itself, especially my free improvisation, is very fluid, and since there’s so much ornamentation involved and because I have a very florid textural approach, it really goes against the harder grid of the electronic sequences. But I try to make them intertwined like some organic monster that’s half metal and half flesh."

While Farah’s 2006 album, Creation, was fascinating, introducing the listener to the basic concept of Farah’s vision of combining electronica with the composition modes of classical music, with Unfolding he has completely rewritten the rulebook, producing a labyrinthine soundscape of such dizzying colours, depths and sonorities that it can’t be called jazz, modern classical or fusion any easier than it could be labelled drum’n'bass or IDM. Without the support of a major label or orchestra, and working with the same limitations of space, time and money that afflict our most challenging artists, Farah took incredible risks to realize the album.

"The composer has to have faith in what they’re doing, that it makes sense to them, and that it might not make sense to other people. So that was a thought that I had while I was making Unfolding," he shares. "I had experimented with my last album, and played stuff over loops, but they weren’t so specifically composed, such imaginative roller coasters, and I kept thinking that I had the capacity to make things… not complex, because it’s not just about making things complicated, but deep and rich in the imagination.

"Ultimately, even though it’s really complex I don’t really think it’s geek music. It’s imagination nerd music. I wanted Unfolding to be like my favourite juggernaut classical pieces, something you could listen to hundreds of times because you’re always hearing new details or different things, and I didn’t want to wait around for someone else to try this experiment out. I wanted to make something that someone could totally immerse themselves in if they wanted to."

Expertly realizing his ambitions with Unfolding, Farah has garnered critical acclaim both in Canada and overseas, rising alongside artists like Squarepusher, Terry Riley, Klaus Schulze and Mahavishnu John McLaughlin for pioneering completely new and irresistible fusions of conventional modes, genres and tones.

John Kameel Farah performs live alongside Sam Shalabi, Black Market and Jade Malek at Eastern Bloc ($8 at 7240 Clark St.; info: johnfarah.com), Sept. 18.