Sarathy Korwar

I couldn't think of where to mention how much I like his new album, There Is Beauty, There Already, so I figured I'd start a thread. It's his most drum-forward album so far and is totally entrancing and gorgeous.

On his old work: I've never heard his debut. I loved More Arriving immediately but bounced off KALAK for some reason. However, I recently went back to it and its rough draft KAL and thought they were both brilliant. The My East Is Your West project is neat. It's an Indian ensemble covering jazz songs that drew on South Asian music, though I kind of wish it was recorded differently (or something? it's live, but it's a tad syrupy at times as I recall). I think I first heard him on the A.R.E. project with Shabaka Hutchings and Hieroglyphic Being (I want to say thanks to a table is the table rec?), which is also really good.

I only just learned he's in the group Flock with Bex Burch and Danalogue, so that's up next.

https://sarathykorwar.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-beauty-there-already-2

the first Flock album was really good, though there was one hilarious moment where there was this crinkling sound that sounded, in my headphones, exactly like someone behind me in the library was noisily consuming a bag of chips and I was getting IA that it was somehow penetrating the noise-cancelling until I figured it out

I loved KAL but haven’t listened to the new one properly yet. I think he’s great but there is a Talvin Singh quality to the music at times (though this may be overdetermined by the occasional busting out of tablas). I also saw him do a brief live percussion show at a museum in London about six months ago and it was simultaneously fascinating and a bit silly

ha I haven't thought about Talvin Singh in a very long time. I suppose there's a shared interest in fusing Indian classical/folk sounds with contemporary electronic music, though I think Korwar is more sensitive to self-exoticizing than Singh was, plus wasn't the latter pretty clearly surfing the jungle/DnB wave? I don't hear anything as overtly trend-hopping as that in SK.

I just listened to the new one again, and if it reminds me of anything it's the Ambarchi, Bitchin Bajas, Natural Info Society sort of trancey percussive stuff that isn't jazz but is hard to slot into any other category.

(got curious about Talvin and put on "Butterfly" from OK, which I think I used to own. tbh I don't hate it)

Yeah I wasn’t using Singh as a put-down, perhaps more a sense that the resemblance can throw up seeming red flags that on closer examination might be illusory. Perhaps a better way to put it is that Korwar sounds more “real world” than, say, Ambarchi does, though I definitely agree that I class those two together (KAL was a bit of a RIYL alternative to Ambarchi albums for me)