Ustad Vilayat Khan - Raga Bhairavi

 

Artist:         Ustad Vilayat Khan

Album:       Raga Bhairavi

Year:          1991

Line-up:      Ustad Vilayat Khan - sitar

Label:         Indian Archive Music

It occured to me one day that even tough our blog has been up and running for eight months now we have not yet written about any true Hindustani classical record. Surely, a vast majority of aural explorers have gone the phase in their musical lives where they have shown some kind of interest towards Indian music. Be it through the hippie phase with a psychedelic flavor of the Beatles or the spiritual and musical connections of Mahavishnu Orchestra, there are many of us avid musicians and listeners who have found at least at certain point of yours life the music of Indian fascinating.

I am no exception. In my late teens, I was overly captivated by Hindustani classical music. Going through my own hippie phase when I was listening to artists such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd I slowly started to moved towards progressive rock and jazz fusion. I remember watching The Monterey Pop and Woodstock festival documentaries over and over. Altough I always marveled at the psychedelic guitar acrobatic freak outs of Jimi Hendrix, the part which left the most bewildered and overenthusiastic to pick up my guitar was the concert of the Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar.

Ravi Shankar is without a doubt the most well-known musician of Hindustani classical music around the globe. When I was contacting the only sitar teacher in my neighbour hood while I was seriously considering taking the sitar and Indian classical music up, he advised me to listen to certain artists. One of them was Ustad Vilayat Khan. Along with Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan is one the most recognised sitar maestros of Indian. For some reason the media and fans have for some reason set up Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan as rivals but personally I do not see the reasoning behind this. Like many of the professional Indian musicians, Vilayat Khan was born in to musical family dating back to the 16^th century. Wanting to originally to be a singer it was however his mother who saw more fit that Vilayat Khan was to bear the family torch of sitar playing tradition. Thus, Vilayat Khan was taught from very early on in the family style called Imdadkhani Gharana.

The master recorded for 65 years making his catalogue almost impossible to go through in one lifetime. The record which I bought (I think it might have been on a completely random basis) is a recording of Raga Bhairavi. To aggravate, a raga is ”the tonal framework for composition and improvisation in Indian classical music”. The Bhairavi raga heard here is traditionally an early morning raga. The scale resembles the Phrygian mode in the western system of musical modes.One interesting notion to be made with this record is that has no tablas (the Indian percussion) nor does it have a drone provided by the tanpura. This is somewhat a personal trademark of Vilayat Khan as he fills out the silences with the strokes to the chikari strings in the sitar. I personally do not have the competency to evaluate in great detail the performance of Ustad Vilayat Khan on this record as Indian classical music is overly complex to the uninitiated ears. What I understand, Vilayat Khan was a traditional interpreter of these kinds of grand, basic ragas. He is also undoubtedly a virtuoso of his instrument but here there is no unnecessary showcase of the virtuosity to be found.

This record is a very pleasant and soothing solo sitar record and if you are interested to broaden our taste in Indian classical music, the musical stylings of Ustad Vilyat Khan are the perfect place to start.

Considering the vast recording career of Vilayat Khan I found it too time consuming trying to dig up an audio sample from this particular record. Please enjoy another performance of the same raga:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzifzIQNyus

Written by Παναγιωτιης

It-Clings vs Pneumatic Detach - The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness

 

Artist:       It-Clings vs Pneumatic Detach

Album:     The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness

Year:        2007

Line-up:    It-Clings (Squid) – words

                 Pneumatic Detach (Justin Brink) – music and programming

Label:       Bugs Crawling Out of People

”These texts contain the raving confessions of necessary evil. What you are about to hear is unpleasant, and unsavioury, these deeds and thoughts come from what people call a degenerate mind, a mind that is twisted and full of filth and rage.”

- It-Clings

I have previously mentioned my habit of occasionally picking up records quite randomly based on some minor detail about the record (be it the cover art, the name of the artist or the album or the line-up on the album). On the other hand, I find certain subgenres of music so intriguing to a level where I use the vast amount of information provided by the internet to seek out records of various subgenre. One of those very specific subgenres of music that has been fascinating me for a long time, is spoken word. And I am not referring to albums which consist primarily of speech such as recorded stand-up shows, readings of poems or other literature, radio broadcasts, interviews et cetera. The records which I am after are those of which are the marriages between spoken word performances and music. Normally, these are projects where a musician and a writer come together to create an original work.

I remember a couple of years ago I was going through the catalogue of Ad Noisem (a Berlin-based record label and a distribution channel for in-house and other labels' releases). They have kindly catalogued their releases by genre and luckily they have listed spoken word records there. Thus, I checked out the few records which had this genre tag and came across the album of today's post which masterfully named The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness by It-Clings vs Pneumatic Detach. Maybe the spoken word genre does not interest you to an extent which it does me but certainly the title of the record will catch your attention. Let me assure you that you are not likely to come across any record quite like The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness any time soon. The album is a collaborative effort of It-Clings, an angry Canadian spoken wordcore artist titling himself as ”rock n' roll supergod It-clings, Kings of the Jews, Saviour of all mankind” who does not write poetry but rants which criticize everything and everybody, and Pneumatic Detach, a one-man project of Justin Brink who works on an Industrial sub-genre called Power Noise, where thick and harsh rhythms are mixed with electro-industrial noise.

As you might have expected The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness is not your regular cup of tea; as a matter of fact I would goes as far as calling this album one the most bat-shit crazy and intense albums – and coming from me that is saying a lot. Musically, this album represents the subgenre of Industrial, Power Noise also known as Rhythmic Noise which is a fusion between noise music and various styles of electronic dance music. Pneumatic Detach summons up distorted noises, drones and resonances to create either more abstract dark ambient-like soundscapes or electronic rhythms parts which are occasionally very catchy and even danceable. All potential melodies are here secondary to the rhythmic patterns and ambient soundscapes but at time one can recognise something reminiscent to riffs constructed of the noise rhythms. Surprisingly enough, every time I play this record I find myself enjoying the music quite a bit even though I am not a huge fan of either noise music or industrial music. The music on The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness is just so otherworldly, twisted, weird and yet enthralling that I cannot help but to feel deeply absorbed by it.

The one element which sets The All Too Logical Descent Into Madness apart from every other album I have ever listened to and makes it a true and unique aural obscurity is certainly the texts provided by It-Clings. Try to imagine the iconic American stand-up comedian Bill Hicks and the psychopaths of the psychological thrillers such as Se7en, The Silence of the Lambs and the Saw franchise coming together to share their view on life and people and you get a picture what is in store for you. The maniacal rants of It-Clings revolve around cynical and nihilistic views on modern society and on the people who inhabit it. As the album progresses these rants develop more into disturbing rambles – as the title of the album suggests - about brutal violence and both physical and mental pain afflicted to people. The second half immerses itself almost like in a torture pornoesque tales and while that not might definitely for everyone, the first half of the album has actually very interesting and sharp observations about modern society and life. I personally find both the social commentary and gorno stuff fascinating.

So if you feel bold enough and wish to take a glimpse of the darker side of human nature, buckle your seat belt and take a wild ride to the sonic mayhem of Pneumatic Detach and the delirious rants of It-Clings. Those who wish to take a sneak peak of what they are getting themselves into, check out the album opener Necessary Evil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXGC8o7vHqo

Written by Παναγιωτιης