|
Talvin Singh's ok
two of the city's dynamic subcultures merge: a thriving Southeast Asian culture mixes with the African-in-fluenced rhythms of drum'n'bass to produce the cutting-edge hybrid dubbed, for lack of a better term, "tabla'n'bass." On last year's Anokha compilation, Singh proved that his music was ready for a wider audience, assembling a range of his own intriguing tracks and those of his contemporaries. OK, Singh's latest offering, is written and arranged entirely by him; not surprisingly, it is a more cohesive album than Anokha, well worth continuous play. The tabla'n'bass movement has a lot of imperialist history to confront; British rockers since the Beatles have milked the musical heritage of India. Singh is less overtly political than the Asian Dub Foundation and less gimmicky than Cornershop, but he is well aware of post-imperialist cultural residue. "Decca," for example, opens with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Kama Sutra, the ultimate exoticist stereotype. Undeniably, however, a benign fascination with the exotic grounds OK's appeal. To the untrained Western ear, indecipherable chants and unexpected chromatic slides make for a refreshing play of sound and somehow flow seamlessly into English spoken word and familiar dance-club grooves. Certainly, listeners who can understand Hindi will find OK rewarding on another level, and will perhaps appreciate the juxtaposition of familiar instruments and language with the newer rhythms of drum'n'bass. While electronic beats have recently been tacked onto everything--from lounge to Madonna--as a clumsy instant update, Singh's machine-made sounds are subtly woven into his music. Far from sounding superfluous or misplaced, they complement the album's distinctly non-Western use of scales and instruments. The beat forms a solid background for the fluid, irregular meandering of a pipe or sitar. In turn, the array of strings, reeds, and bilingual chants and poetry humanizes the spacey percussion. It's a welcome challenge for the listener to separate the traditional and the electronic elements. Singh knows when to make the machines disappear, however; tracks like "Traveller" and "Soni" benefit from striking, strategically interspersed moments of pure instrumental sound that leave nothing to be desired. OK's success attests to the multicultural evolution of dance music, introducing tablas, flutes, and a wealth of other sounds to an already diverse melange of drum'n'bass. Things can only get more interesting from here. (Island) --Karen Rosenberg
| |||||||||||||||||
