Muzikifan,
CD Review
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This is described as electro-folk. Kartik & Gotam are Israeli DJs with a passion for Indian music. Gotam was from the desert and Kartik from the big city and they tried to bring the ambient sounds from their respective backgrounds -- swirling sands vs hubbub of traffic -- to bear on Arab songs. Their debut with Hebrew rap music was not an auspicious beginning. But then they heard some singers at a Tajik wedding and their ears were opened. They have brought some Carnatic classical musicians to jam with the Tajiki singers and accordionist. The result is an Indian-sounding album with a 60s pop sensibility in some of the experimental ideas. The opening cut made me think of John Lennon's groundbreaking psychedelic ditty "Tomorrow never knows" (on Revolver, 1966), with double-tracked vocals through a whirling Leslie speaker and razor-spliced tape loops. A decade later Brian Eno saw the potential in this one-chord "raga"-like riff & recorded it with Phil Manzanera on the 801 Live album. The Lennon-Eno nexus is an important one for experimental music and their ideas are still worth exploring. K&G's electronica, with some rock drumming, is a good basis for the flights of fancy of the Indian musicians on flute, violin, tablas, etcetera, but it does degenerate into a rock-and-rolly free-for-all from time to time ("Shiva sheva"), and bad pop ("Door open door"). I wish they had left off the samples of airline stewardess instructions to passengers -- it's irritating, not cute -- and the snippets from yoga tapes, which do not induce relaxation when they are repeated over a funk groove reminiscent of Beck, Bogart & Appice's "Superstition"! By the end it really goes down the tubes, which is too bad. The Indian musicians deserve better: maybe Cheb i Sabbah will do a Carnatic album next. 06/01/10
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