Sounds of the Asian Underground
Various, Talvin Singh Presents Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Underground (Island)
9+
Various, Vedic Presents Rhythmic Intelligence (Sub Rosa) 9+
Various, Star Rise: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook Remixed (Real World)
9+
Before I even left for London last fall, I knew the best night for clubbing was going to be a Monday night. After most of London is shut down and asleep the most revolutionary DJ-ing around could be heard at The Blue Note, featuring Talvin Singh's Anokha showcase. I was already familiar with the album which came out earlier in the year. The compilation fulfilled much of the promise I saw in the fusion between Indian music and drum 'n' bass way back in 1994, which saw the release of Deep Into Jungle Territory: A Jungle-Bhangra Fusion. That album was only partly successful. The proto-drum 'n' bass programs were primitive and the Punjabi disco didn't always blend too well. But, to its credit, it was a cultural mix that was much more interesting than some of the other relatively sterile, homogenous dance music at the time.
Talvin Singh is a master tabla player and a session player sought after by Jah Wobble, Transglobal Underground, Natasha Atlas, and Bjork. He opened the Anokha club in May of 1996 and has since curated evenings of eclectic mixes of "ethnopsychedelic" dub, Bombay film scores, 80s bhangra, traditional South Asian sitar and female chants, and even Indian hip hop. I walked into the club and was immediately captivated by the exotica sounds of DJ Mukul in the upstairs bar-cafe. The Time Out guide said Mukul and Nelson Dilation were simply spinning "classical Asian music." I got much more than I expected. Every cut was a combination of a variety of dance musics and Eastern rhythms mixed with much more imagination than any drum 'n' bass I have heard all year. While DJs Future Soundz of India, Equal-I, and the inna.most were supposed to be the main attraction downstairs, I found myself repeatedly coming up to escape the sweaty crowd and enjoy the creative mixes.
The intensity of the music downstairs, however, was undeniable. Especially when Talvin Singh manned the tables near the end of the night (morning). Some of the dancers stopped and just gathered around Singh to watch him make his magic during his last DJ gig of the year. His hands deftly scratched, flipped and paused with the grace of, well, a master tabla player. While Singh's album had many highlights, none prepared me for the live energy of the club itself. I felt I had been priviledged to experience some high caliber drum 'n' bass DJing by attending the deadly Dragon Sound System on Sunday nights at Chicago's Empty Bottle. Led by DJ Rik Shaw (bassist for Rome) and DJ U-Sheen (aka Johnny "Machine" Herndon, drummer for Tortoise), the Deadly Dragon had their good nights, but have lately been stagnating, repeating tracks week after week, and relying on lots and lots of standard dancehall reggae. At Anokha, I saw the future of drum 'n' bass. It doesn't necessarily have to be Asian music. There are plenty of other hybrids just waiting to spark new life into dance floors, from Brazillian rhythms to West African music. The Asian Soundz collective of Anokha show the potential of drum 'n' bass. The idea is to take a mere style and use it as a springboard to create art, littered with human elements like mistakes, emotional tantrums, delicate beauty, just as DJ Shadow did for the Mo Wax "trip hop" and Moby, Aphex Twin and Howie B did for "electronica."
On Rhythmic Intelligence, Anokha DJ Vedic (named after India's ancient hymn tradition) gets his turn in the spotlite. While not radically changing Singh's formula, he ups the quality a notch. Especially with Bedouin Ascent's breathtaking "Ancient Ocean." It sucks you in for 13 minutes and you lose all sense of time as flutes and cyber handclaps hypnotize you until you're just a part of the primordial soup.
It is a testimony to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's forward thinking that he authorized his work to be remixed by these young rugrats. Yet why did he continue to work with that Michael Brook schmuck? He did nothing but poison Khan's devotional music with gloopy production and cheesy whitebread singing. Thankfully, the tasteful DJs of the Asian Underground all but completely phased out Brook's annoying presence on Star Rise, yay technology! It features remixes by Earthtribe, State Of Bengal, Talvin Singh and Asian Dub Foundation. This is a must for anyone who was at least intrigued by the previous two compilations.
