On the show tomorrow night, musical mystery and sounds to delight and entice one and all. Come in, come all into the musical carnivale that is Powerspot.
1. Nitin Sawhney- Heer- CD Human
2 Nitin Sawhney- Raag- CD Human
3. Bombay Dub Orchestra-Compassion
4. Bombay Dub Orchestra-Rare Earth
5. Bombay Dub Orchestra-Mumtaz
6. *State of Bengal vs Paban Das Baul- Kali- CD Tana Tani
7. Susheela Rahman- Sharayana- CD Music for Crocodiles
8. Steve Tibbetts Choying Drolma-Padmakara
9. Steve Tibbetts Choying Drolma-Song of Realization
10. Ashok Roy-Rag Mishra Pilu - Alap
11. L. Subramaniam-Vatapi- CD Free Your MInd
12. Fuji Dub-Fuji Dr Ewon (Triple Earth Remix)- CD Lagos Brooklyn Brixton
13. Fuji Dub- Fuji Fe Full (Godwin Logie Remix)
14. Nadya and 101 candles orkestra- CD Crazy Moon
15. Waiting for Guiness- CD The Show
Bombay Dub Orchestra
The Bombay Dub Orchestra is the brainchild of two English musicians, Andrew T. Mackay and Garry Hughes, who wanted to do something that hadn't been tried before: to make the ultimate chill-out album, using an Indian orchestra and soloists. Combining electronic sessions recorded in the UK with orchestral sessions in Bombay India the duo have recorded with the cream of Bombay's Indian classical musicians - including leading players of the sitar, tabla, bansuri (wooden flute) and some memorable vocal performers.
Welcome to a world of cinematic lushness, orchestral delights, global voices, rhythms, vintage synthesizers and electronic bleeps. This is Bombay Dub Orchestra – the remarkable debut album from the U.K.-based duo of Garry Hughes (Björk, Sly & Robbie) and Andrew T. Mackay (VAST, Annie Leibovitz). Bombay Dub Orchestra is music that will stroke the senses and enamour the soul, with its uniquely brilliant crossover of orchestral arrangements, modern, lush beats and synthesizers and a heavy slant to the music of India.
That territory has been mapped by bands like Röyksopp, Air and Zero 7, but no one had dragged a 28-piece Indian string section into the arena before. And while the name "Bombay Dub Orchestra" conjures up visions of the garish pop of Bollywood's song-and-dance numbers, or the reverb-drenched, proto-psychedelic sounds of Jamaican dub, this music creates and sustains a very different mood.
It all began some seven years ago when producer Garry Hughes and string arranger/composer Andrew T. Mackay, went to India to record some of that city's top session players for a project by the London based Indian duo Spellbound.
"I produced and Andrew arranged," Hughes recalls. "It was a fantastic experience recording these guys, and on the plane coming home we thought how great it would be to make an orchestral chill-out record with these players."
This was easier said than done, since both Mackay and Hughes had other irons in the fire. Andrew T. Mackay, who is classically trained and is a descendant of one Luciano Francesco Paggi, "the Italian flautist, painter and revolutionary," has a busy career writing music for films, television, and artists as diverse as photographers Annie Liebovitz & Herb Ritts and the late actor Peter Cushing as well as arranging string orchestras for the likes of L.A. rockers VAST and '80s legends ABC. Garry Hughes, who claims to be a direct descendant of "a long line of horse thieves," had gigs as a keyboardist and producer with artists like Björk, Sly and Robbie, Garbage, The Pink Floyd Orchestral Project, and The Art of Noise. When they finally had a chance to work on their long-delayed idea, the goal, according to Hughes, was simple: "to explore music that no one else had so far done."
Mid-tempo trip-hop propels a rich tapestry of orchestral strings in "Compassion," with occasional wisps of Indian and Western instruments and subtle hints of '60s cinema. The slow groove on "Dust" fits neatly beneath the lyrical flow of the strings and dreamy keyboards. By the time you reach "The Greater Silence" later on the disc, the ambient dreamscapes have completely taken over. This is a pure, floating soundscape from an orchestra. In classic "dub" style Hughes and Mackay have also generously provided a second CD of remixed "versions" of the original music tracks. These mixes take the material into new sonic realms, traveling from upbeat dancefloor fillers to ambient tone poems, which strip the material down to orchestral textures.
The majority of the music was written in the U.K., in Hughes' countryside studio and Mackay's West London studio. Mackay and Hughes then worked on the intricate, cinematic arrangements 'faking' them up with digital samples. They ended up with a pretty fair approximation of what their Bombay Dub Orchestra would sound like. But there was no chance that the two producers would be satisfied with that. "I love samples and use them a lot," Hughes says, "but some things you have to do with real players." Mackay added " There are some truly amazing orchestral sample libraries out there but there is nothing like the real thing, especially with the wonderful Indian musical intonations!"
In March 2005, Mackay and Hughes finally returned to Bombay and began putting the final elements of their long-awaited debut album together. "During that week, we recorded a 28-piece string section (12 violins, 8 violas and 8 cellos) on 10 different tracks. We recorded the orchestra several times to achieve the multilayered arrangements that we had scored."
That was during the day; in the evenings, they recorded the best of Bombay's Indian classical musicians - including leading players of the sitar, sarangi, tabla, bansuri (wooden flute) and some memorable vocal performances. As Hughes explains, "the great thing about Indian classical music is that it's all about improvisation. With Western classical musicians, it's sometimes hard to give them a melody and say, run with it. But with these players, we'd give them the written parts or melody and in some cases the vaguest sketch of a melody and hit the 'record' button."
The results were exactly what the producers wanted. And beyond this, some of the sessions inspired Mackay & Hughes to rescore and arrange several of the tracks. The vocals on "Feel," by Rakesh Pandit, a young Bombay-based singer brought in by engineering legend Daman Sood, were a complete surprise: he eventually leaves the melody completely and begins improvising in a beautifully energetic yet still somber way. The song would later have to be rebuilt when Mackay and Hughes got the sessions back to England, but it was worth the effort. "It was the most exciting week I've ever spent in a studio," Hughes states. "Then we took the whole lot home, and we spent some time extending the intro, outro and middle section to accommodate Rakesh's inspiring vocal performance."
What they made of it is a surprisingly varied group of pieces, given the overall mood of the album. "The Berber of Seville," for example, features not only a wacky pun in its title, but some killer North African singing by Khalid Kharchaf (who really is a Berber singer from Morocco via London's Portobello Road). "To The Shore" has a simple but appealing flute melody, supported by a striking orchestration of dulcimer, choir, strings and piano, all driven forward by steady percussion. And then there's "Beauty and the East." This epic mix of Indian instruments with electronica is one of the pieces that was further worked on in Hughes' studio out of the sessions recorded in Bombay and additional soloists recorded in London. Sitar, voice, tabla, bansuri, santoor and violin appear in rapid succession, over shifting electronic drones and a sturdy, rocking tabla and rhythm track. A sitar melody alternates with strings over redoubled percussion; the opening theme returns, and a solo Indian-style violin floats over a rich layer of drones.
Bombay Dub Orchestra also includes a few pieces that share in the album's more stark classical mood but which offer a surprising contrast in sound. "Sonata" is, as the name implies, a piece in more of a Western classical mode, featuring Andrew T. Mackay's piano. Even more striking is "Remembrance," a lovely, sparse piano solo, in a style that recalls the likes of Debussy, Fauré or Satie. The connection to the rest of the project may not be immediately obvious, Hughes says, but it's there: "My home is opposite an old church. Andrew went over one Sunday - it was Remembrance Day here (the U.K. equivalent of Memorial Day) and the pastor's theme was remembering the troops. He said that a lot of those people came from places like India and Africa and it was important to remember this when topics like immigration and racism come up. Andrew came back and wrote this piece." Violins followed by violas glide in at the end of the track seemingly from somewhere 'over the Himalayas' and then vanish as quickly as they appeared leaving the gentle yet poignant piano bare and fragile.
Garry Hughes is no stranger to Six Degrees fans: he has worked on recordings by Euphoria, Bobi Céspedes, and Continuo, among others. So while he didn't have a contract when he and Andrew T. Mackay were putting the Bombay Dub Orchestra together, he says "I did have Six Degrees in the back of my mind." He also says the experience of working with the musicians in Bombay was so rewarding that they're eager to do it again. The first sessions were filmed, so a visual document of the project may be in the works, and as for a potential follow-up, Mackay simply says, "much more of the album will be written in India and we certainly aim to get out there much earlier in the process."
Nadia's 101 candle orkestra- CD Crazy Moon
Fuji Dub-CD Lagos-Brooklyn-Brixton
Fuji -- Ferocious Urban Jungle Intensity -- a music named (so the story goes) by it's first master, Alhaji Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, when he saw a postcard of Mount Fuji in an airport transit lounge and felt it graphically represented the essaential peace lying at the heart of the music. 'Were' -- a music expressing Islamic faith that helps act as a wake-up call to morning prayer for Yoruba Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. The roots of 'Fuji'.
'Fuji Dub' -- Five tracks from a Fuji master recorded in Brooklyn, U.S. remixed in Brixton, U.K.
The idea behind this was that I was fed up with all the various dance albums which used African or Arabic samples as a bit of exotic fluff on the top of a purely conventional (and boring) four-on-the-floor dance beat. Why not do it the other way round? Use an African music as the meat beat and studio dub techniques as the exotic bit. Nice idea in theory - not so easy in practice. Not least of which is that Fuji music (heavy duty Nigerian urban percussion) races along, whereas reggae gently lopes. Oh well, fun to do and has achieved cult status in certain quarters.
And who is the artist who wishes to remain anonymous? Simple - he even gets a name check within the first 30 seconds of the first song. He was fine for the remixing to be done, he was just concerned that it might confuse his audience as it's remixes of existing releases so him remaining anonymous was part of the deal. -- Iain Scott
State of Bengal vs Paban Das Baul- CD Tana Tani
Welcome to the place where words fail and music speaks.
Tana Tani' plunges Paban into the dub-heavy melee of the British Asian breakbeat scene, where his ecstatic, smoky vocals soar over juddering beats and squelchy basslines, and his urgent and hypnotic rhythms mutate into frenetic drum 'n' bass breaks.
The collaboration began in Zaman's home studio in Upton Park, east London in December 2002 and continued to grow at Paban's Paris home. During the sessions Zaman began working around Paban's strong, timeless melodies and haunting lyrics, building up each song organically. Often Zaman's syncopated beats were unfamiliar to Paban, and essentially they had to learn each other's music. Both Zaman and Mimlu Sen (Paban's partner and collaborator) made suggestions, and Paban experimented by fitting more familiar rhythmic patterns like the dhrupada of the jhaptal into Zaman's syncopations.
'You can take a Baul to a track,' explains Mimlu Sen, 'but you can't make him synch unless the approach is organic and interior.'
Reviewer: Evening Standard UK
This is described as a folk culture over 500 years old meeting this digital soundscapes of the 21st century. The versus of the title suggests some sort of contest, but if the British Asian music scene has proved anything, it is that the subcontinent's rich and ancient cultures are ripe and durable enought for fusing. State of Bengal (aka Sam Zaman) is a leading DJ and producer in the Asian club scene, and Paban Das Baul is a singer from Bengal's mystical sect of wandering minstrels, the Bauls. While the album's shape and character comes from Zaman, it's felicitous details come from Paban's incantatory vocals and the traditional Baul instruments used on many of the tracks. The title track translates as "pushing and pulling", which could be a metaphor for the whole project. A fine release from the label that pioneered the historic Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan fusions a decade ago.
Reviewer: Songlines Magazine 'Top Of The World' UK
Asian Fusion Disc of the Year So Far
The result of this cultural meshing of streetwise dance production and ancient folk culture is remarkably cohesive, which bears testimony to Zaman's sympathetic production and Paban Das Baul's willingness to embrace Westernised dance sounds.....The album features Asian Dub Foundation's Aniruddha Das on bass, and renowned jazz drummer Marque Gilmour, who replicates drum'n'bass skittering hi-hats and kick-drum patterns to startling effect. The result is extremely funky... and deeply soulful, with Paban's soul-searching voice sounding marvellous throughout. The Asian-fusion disc of the year so far.Rating (out of 5):
Reviewer: Mojo UK
State of Bengal Vs Paban Das Baul
Sometimes getting spiritual while melting your brain appeals. When London's State of Bengal last passed this way, there was a short but memorable collaboration with Ananda Shankar, the psychedelia-minded sitarist. This time, they've teamed up with a leading light of Bengal's Bauls, a musical gypsy caste of minstrels, ascetics and devotees of tantric sex, to go to places others have ventured (Temple of Sound and Rizwan-Muazzam, Massive Attack's remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and update them for 2004.
Reviewer: ethnotechno.com internet
State of Bengal Vs Paban Das Baul - Tana Tani
Tana Tani - meaning "push and pull", a metaphor for many things, as we shall see - is a brilliant serenade to what's quickly becoming known as Asian Chill... The very opener is destined for fame, certain to be picked up by more chill-out comps than Thievery Corporation and Groove Armada combined: "Moner Manush," the very definition of lie-back-relax-and-immerse-submerge-yourself-into-your-self-and-the-Self-we'll-take-care-of-everything. From there, it only gets better. "Kali," the black goddess, sees beautiful light as Zaman and Baul once again push/pull meaning into metaphor. The following tribute, "Radha Krishna," is a midtempo mindswirl, and by the time they reach the title track, you've been fully stretched, sedated and surrendering. Even when Zaman programs d-'n-b, as in "Tana Tani," "Ram Rahim" and "Al Keuto Sap," he allows spaciousness to exist. Much like the Baul practice of Aarope Sadhana - the yoga of breathing - Zaman lets his beats out for fresh air. He even steps aside, on occasion, and lets tradition be kept: the heartwrenching "Padma Nodi" and "Kon Ek Pakhi," a minimalist dream. The album's opus, in this journalist's ear, may very well be "Medina," with sounds mimicking the Australian digeridoo and Brazilian berimbau, laid atop an absolutely unbeatable (slightly) broken beat. Paban's voice continues its sensual voyage from headspace to heartspace, and you give in. There is no choice, really. Tana Tani is seductive, reels you in with delicate claws and rips away fragments of your being. When you recover, you realize it was excess dissolved, and you emerge with clarity, focused, inspired and content.
Steve Tibbetts & Choying Drolma- CD SELWA-Padmakara / Song of Realization
Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts
In 1997, Choying Drolma and Steve Tibbetts (a guitarist from Minnesota) created an international stir with a remarkable album of Tibetan Buddhist chants paired with atmospheric soundscapes of guitar and percussion. The guitarist was Steve Tibbetts, and while he'd built up a bit of a reputation through his critically-acclaimed albums for ECM Records, he created something profound, and profoundly different, in his collaboration with the Tibetan Buddhist nun Choying Drolma. Rather than a slick piece of Western dance music with appropriated Eastern melodies, this was a carefully produced, deeply felt sonic environment built around and in response to an ancient practice of visualization and meditation. The Tibbetts/Drolma album was unlike anything else that was happening at the time, and it's taken seven years for anyone to follow in their footsteps. Finally, in their Six Degrees Records debut, Steve Tibbetts and Choying Drolma have released a new recording, called Selwa, which expands on the work they began in that first groundbreaking album.
Choying Drolma practices a form of Vajrayana Buddhism that involves cutting through the various physical and spiritual obstacles to enlightenment (the title means "cutting"), and that practice can take the form of a fairly vigorous meditation, often undertaken in provocative settings like graveyards. Tibbetts approaches this sort of source material with an uncommon humility and a healthy amount of respect. On Selwa, Tibbetts establishes his panorama of sound early on, with the moody, nocturnal instrumentation of "Palden Rangjung." Its flowing ambient acoustic guitar, drones, effects, and slow, almost tribal hand drumming echo the dark vision of Drolma's supplication:
Powerful blood drinker, glorious vitality In the land of Yama, you are Ekajati Fire eater, blood wearer, wearing the naga emblems Kali, the Blood Dripper, I praise you.
On a somewhat lighter note, Choying Drolma's singing on the track "Vakritunda" reflects both the sounds of devotional Hindu bhajans and contemporary Hindi pop music. "Vakritunda" is a piece with slightly more Western-sounding percussion and an example of the tasty, guerrilla guitar solos that sneak into much of Steve Tibbetts' work.
Perhaps the centerpiece of the album is "Song of Realization," an epic blend of multiple voices, hand drums, acoustic and electric guitars, and other less easily identified sounds. It is at once a transcendent and grounded work - again, because it follows the text of the aspiration prayer:
I do not recognize this earth as earth It is an assembly hall adorned by flowers. I do not recognize me to be me I am the supreme victor, the wish-fulfilling jewel.
The new album was built around recordings made by Tibbetts and his longtime percussionist Marc Anderson in Boudhanath, a Tibetan enclave in the Himalayan country of Nepal. There, not far from a school for nuns that Choying Drolma has founded, they recorded her chants, often feeding a drone into her headphones to set the pitch before letting the tape roll. "It seemed like she was singing with four lungs," Tibbetts recalls. "Some of her takes left Marc and I somewhat stunned. She'd finish the song. I'd quickly save the recording file on the laptop. Choying would say "Tik chha?" meaning, "it's okay?" and Marc and I would slowly nod." Back in Minnesota, Tibbetts and Anderson wove together tapestries of acoustic and electric guitars, shifting drones, and subtle hand percussion. They enlisted the support of Lee Townsend, who has produced most of Bill Frisell's recordings, and created an organic blend of ancient and modern, Eastern and Western.
Guitar aficionados have been following Steve Tibbetts' since 1977 as he has steadily gone about making himself one of the more inventive musicians on the American music scene. To a wider audience, however, Tibbetts remains a mystery. His albums reflect his own interest in everything from 1970s progressive rock (King Crimson, Eno, etc.) to ambient electronica, to world music. But the two collaborations with Choying Drolma occupy a special place in Tibbetts' music.
Choying Drolma is a fascinating character herself. She told an interviewer "Even before I was a nun I always had this thought, this question, wondering why, if boys can do something, why can't girls? That kind of attitude continued with me even in the nunnery. I would see lots of male teachers come and teach. All males. Why is it only monks that go on to become teachers, to get these chances? The Tibetan word for "woman" translates as "low birth." I hated that." She decided she wanted to change the traditional lot of women in Tibetan society, and given her notoriety since 1997, Choying has found the opportunity to do just that. "That's what I want to do with the school I've started, the Arya Tara school. I want nuns to learn many things and know why they are doing what they are doing, what the benefit is in it. Not just in practicing Tibetan Buddhism, but in learning math, English, learning basic medicine. If they're doing something, they must know why they are doing it."
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Selwa is that the musicians know "why they are doing it." On the surface, it seems a bizarre collaboration: Why would a pair of American musicians want to spend the time and effort to learn these chants and create a sonic environment that brings them to the West? Again, the answer lies in the text of one of the aspiration prayers. The concluding lines of "Song of Realization" read:
If you understand this song, it will be molasses for your ears. If you cannot understand it, you have no connection with this song.
Selwa is about understanding - not a literal understanding of the Tibetan meditations themselves, but an understanding of the practice of undermining the machinery of conceptualization; creating a space of non-thought, clarity, compassion, and bliss. Selwa offers an unexpected connection to a tradition that's over a thousand years old.
L.Subramaniam-CD Free Your Mind -Vatapi
Over an hour of musics in which L. Subramaniam punctuates his long phrases with ascending accents, a graland of notes that never lose their sense of interpretation. Recorded live at Indian Instute of Science in Bengalore and released in 2002
L. Subramaniam has been proclaim "Chakravarti" the emperor of violinists by his peer at the age of 15. The trio he created with his two brother, also violonits, became a legendary band in India. Since, he lead his career promoting carnatic music and playing as well with indian master as with international stars ( Herbie Hancok, George Harisson, Stanley Clarke, Larry Coryell). He is also a composer and had wrote down a very eclectic work: concertos, pieces for symphony orchestras, new rags and motion picture soundtracks.
Susheela Rahman- CD Music for Crocodiles-
Susheela Raman, Music for Crocodiles
The Australia-raised Asian singer marries East to West
Peter Culshaw
Sunday October 16, 2005
If you were a singer born in England to south Indian parents and raised in Australia, what would you sound like? Susheela Rahman has been struggling to find her true voice since her experimental, jazzy debut album Salt Rain (which was nominated for 2001's Mercury Prize). With her third album she really has arrived, alchemically melding East and West, her voice more mature, confident and richer. Paradoxically, the album is at once more Indian and more English. Among its many highlights are a heart-wrenching tribute to a friend who committed suicide, and a hypnotic funk reworking of 18th century Tamil holy texts.
As an artist, Raman continues to develop and explore issues of identity with new sounds that celebrate multiplicity. She draws her collaborators from across Europe, Asia, and Africa: Cameroonian bassist Hilaire Penda, Guinea-Bissau born percussionist Djanuno Dabo, American drummer Marque Gilmore, British-Asian tabla player Aref Durvesh, and of course British guitarist and producer Sam Mills are at the heart of this album as they were on Salt Rain. Paradoxically, Music for Crocodiles is both more English and more Indian than either Salt Rain or Love Trap. More than half the songs are in English (her first language) and Raman emerges as a formidable songwriter (listen to What Silence Said and The Same Song). And where on the previous albums there were musicians from everywhere playing Indian songs, here we have musicians from India playing songs in English. A new dimension came from recording in India, as well as in the UK and France. The Indian presence adds joy, light, and depth to the record. tric East African groove and Raman's blues based vocal could be from Addis Ababa, Mumbai, or Chicago. Incidentally the amazing Hammond organ is played by Malian Chek Tdjen Seck, the musical godfather of Paris. Light Years recorded in Madras, is a South Indian melody transmuted here into a sublime English love song. Meanwhile is Raman's melody, sung in English but based on the rare South Indian raga, Kanyakangi, which infuses its sultry, seductive atmosphere. For the first time, Susheela also sings in French on L'ame Volatile. The album was produced by Sam Mills and engineered by Stuart Bruce in the same room at Real World studios as Salt Rain. With much of the same band on the album it was a flashback to recording Ganapati. The buzz and feeling really reminded the whole team of Salt Rain. Everybody had that same feeling of excitement and revelation. Raman and producer Sam Mills put everything they had into this record. They took several months off to prepare for the studio and make sure they had the material they wanted and it's paid off: The buzz the record has created is like Salt Rain too - Raman and Mills have had a hard time keeping hold of their listening copies as people eagerly requested the album. Now we can all hear it.
As an artist, Raman continues to develop and explore issues of identity with new sounds that celebrate multiplicity. She draws her collaborators from across Europe, Asia, and Africa: Cameroonian bassist Hilaire Penda, Guinea-Bissau born percussionist Djanuno Dabo, American drummer Marque Gilmore, British-Asian tabla player Aref Durvesh, and of course British guitarist and producer Sam Mills are at the heart of this album as they were on Salt Rain. Paradoxically, Music for Crocodiles is both more English and more Indian than either Salt Rain or Love Trap. More than half the songs are in English (her first language) and Raman emerges as a formidable songwriter (listen to What Silence Said and The Same Song). And where on the previous albums there were musicians from everywhere playing Indian songs, here we have musicians from India playing songs in English. A new dimension came from recording in India, as well as in the UK and France. The Indian presence adds joy, light, and depth to the record. tric East African groove and Raman's blues based vocal could be from Addis Ababa, Mumbai, or Chicago. Incidentally the amazing Hammond organ is played by Malian Chek Tdjen Seck, the musical godfather of Paris. Light Years recorded in Madras, is a South Indian melody transmuted here into a sublime English love song. Meanwhile is Raman's melody, sung in English but based on the rare South Indian raga, Kanyakangi, which infuses its sultry, seductive atmosphere. For the first time, Susheela also sings in French on L'ame Volatile.
Nitin Sawhney-CD Human- Track Heer / Raag
Ashok Roy- CD Master of the Sarod
