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LP
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GB 172LP
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British producer Shackleton has transformed Saagara's highly acclaimed 2024 album 3 into a haunting, dub-infused counterpart. What began as a remix request evolved into a full-length reinterpretation, where Saagara's intricate blend of South Indian percussion, jazz, and electronic elements enters a dark, atmospheric dialogue with Shackleton's shapeshifting soundscapes. The result is a captivating rework that stands beautifully alongside the original, subtly amplifying its drama while adding new layers of depth and mystery. 3 made itself right at home in the tak:til universe as soon as it was released to considerable acclaim, quickly becoming as much of a touchstone for the label's Fourth World aesthetic as Jon Hassell, 75 Dollar Bill, and Sirom. A mind-twisting conference of jazz clarinet and sax, Carnatic percussion from South India and the kind of minutely textured electronic music that doesn't mind if you sit down (but would definitely prefer you to dance), the band's first album for seven years was well worth waiting for. What had Wacław Zimpel been up to in the meantime? Those seven years appear to have been extremely well-spent. What's been picked up on the way? For one, the conviction that the studio is as much of an instrument as the clarinet, the sax and indeed the percussion and violin that Saagara's elite line-up of Giridhar Udupa, Aggu Baba, K Raja and Mysore N. Karthik have spent their whole lives mastering. And it's to the studio that 3 has been led once again, in the form of this brilliant set by a British experimental electronicist celebrated for his groundbreaking dubstep productions and, latterly, for his more ambient and minimalist work and a series of high-profile collaborations (Pinch, Six Organs of Admittance, Holy Tongue and, indeed, Wacław Zimpel). At every point as beautifully coiled and weighted as 3, it matches the original for drama, trades blows with it, squints at it, smiles at it, waves at it and just as often picks its pocket. There's a little more darkness in these versions, Lancashire rain rather more than the heat and dust of Southern India, perhaps; but it's recognizably an exchange of love and respect that will get owners of both records scuttling backwards and forwards between the two. Wacław's lovely description of 3 as "interstellar folk" places that record firmly within one of music's more fascinating recent currents: the meeting of electronics and global roots, often anchored by drone, a fascination with minimalism and the kind of progressive retrofuturism that always seems to emerge at times of crisis.
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CD
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GB 159CD
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Saagara's new album, 3, is the third installment of this acclaimed collaboration between Polish producer/multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel and four virtuosic musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) and violinist Mysore N. Karthik. It's a buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms and pulsating electronic patterns. An album of deeply transformative compositions that navigate tradition and experimentation as they move towards the universal. Zimpel works with a diverse array of music. The Warsaw-based musician/producer started out playing free jazz with artists like Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake and Joe McPhee. Later, he went from minimalism inspired albums to folk-trance collaborations to synth-buzzing solo releases, along the way developing a vivid electronic music language through collaborations with British electronic artists James Holden and Sam Shackleton. The Saagara project was first initiated during a jam session in Poland more than a decade ago by Zimpel and one of the most prominent Indian percussionists Gitridhar Udupa (ghatam), and took further shape during his visit to India in 2012. With the 1976 album Shakti with John McLaughlin in mind, particularly its virtuosic blending of Western melodic-rhythmic concepts with Carnatic ones, Zimpel wanted to create something that would continue that ethos but with an individualized approach. His deep fascination with minimalism, tinged with electronics, helped shape the project's concept as did the grooves and sounds of Carnatic music's most prominent instruments. Through the ensemble's collective experimentation, the edgy rhythms of Carnatic music became seamlessly synchronized with Zimpel's clarinet and electronics and Karthik's violin parts. On 3 the music is not as contemplative as it was on the previous two albums. Acidic electronic post-club sounds now counterpoint the traditional instruments, and the instruments themselves are filtered through contemporary processing. This can be clearly heard on the album's densely rhythmic opening track, "God of Bangalore."
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LP
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GB 159LP
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LP version. Saagara's new album, 3, is the third installment of this acclaimed collaboration between Polish producer/multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel and four virtuosic musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) and violinist Mysore N. Karthik. It's a buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms and pulsating electronic patterns. An album of deeply transformative compositions that navigate tradition and experimentation as they move towards the universal. Zimpel works with a diverse array of music. The Warsaw-based musician/producer started out playing free jazz with artists like Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake and Joe McPhee. Later, he went from minimalism inspired albums to folk-trance collaborations to synth-buzzing solo releases, along the way developing a vivid electronic music language through collaborations with British electronic artists James Holden and Sam Shackleton. The Saagara project was first initiated during a jam session in Poland more than a decade ago by Zimpel and one of the most prominent Indian percussionists Gitridhar Udupa (ghatam), and took further shape during his visit to India in 2012. With the 1976 album Shakti with John McLaughlin in mind, particularly its virtuosic blending of Western melodic-rhythmic concepts with Carnatic ones, Zimpel wanted to create something that would continue that ethos but with an individualized approach. His deep fascination with minimalism, tinged with electronics, helped shape the project's concept as did the grooves and sounds of Carnatic music's most prominent instruments. Through the ensemble's collective experimentation, the edgy rhythms of Carnatic music became seamlessly synchronized with Zimpel's clarinet and electronics and Karthik's violin parts. On 3 the music is not as contemplative as it was on the previous two albums. Acidic electronic post-club sounds now counterpoint the traditional instruments, and the instruments themselves are filtered through contemporary processing. This can be clearly heard on the album's densely rhythmic opening track, "God of Bangalore."
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