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ARTIST
TITLE
3
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
GB 159CD GB 159CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
6/6/2025

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."