Muzikifan,
Album Review
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Tarun Nayar is a Vancouver-based DJ and now sets forth to do what Cheb i Sabbah and Gaudi have done before him: reinterpret traditional South Asian music for a groove-oriented audience. He is also part of a group called Delhi 2 Dublin which adds Celtic instruments to Indian disco but that is a stretch too far for my brain to grasp. This 22° view, however, is very good and puts the Indian instruments at the forefront with a dash of electronica to give it some boom and make you tap your feet. The album is the soundtrack to a trippy ramble through Asia and flows well from mood to mood. In his travels with a tapedeck, Nayar has also made it to Bhutan and Tokyo so the range is broadened outside the Subcontinent (though I can happily skip the Kyoto singing). One of Nayar's recent projects has been the soundtrack to a documentary about Mumbai's red-light district so he knows how to set a scene musically and when to add some oomph. His samples are all sounds he generated himself so it's a fresh palette and not the usual well-worn snippets of groove we recognize on other DJ efforts. In the middle of the album there's a track called "Innocence" which has a woman "rapping" in English. I suppose it's a Laurie Anderson-type thing but it really is putrid. I have unchecked it in iTunes so I don't have to hear it again: one of the beauties of modern technology. The concept of "Mamaji," which also features talking, is a borrowed from Gaudi's opener but it doesn't diminish the excellence of this effort. 22 Degrees doesn't sustain the intensity of Sabbah's Devotion or Gaudi's Dub Qawwali, but then those are the Himalayas of the genre. 03/01/11
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