Azul Music
Marsicano : presents “Electric sitar”
-electronic grooves by Edson X- (BRA,2003)***°
Marsicano studied sitar with Ravi Shankar and Krishna Chakravarty at the University of Benares in India. For the sitar he’s a kind of multi-interested octopus working in various possible fields where sitar was used before. This release goes beyond the usual mainstream lounge groove style. Different compared to other lounge related music, here we have a real group building up real tracks with a real compositional structure. Of course the mixing beats are rather straight forward, simple exact on-beat beats, but they still are part of the music as another kind of instrument. It’s perhaps this way that the complete score really works well, for home listening entertainment. And for the compositional reasons you could as well label this release as Sitar Fusion, with a few more “modern beats” involved. The approach in that way is not that different from what the great Ananda Shankar did near the end of his life. Guest musicians play tabla and percussion, berimbau, double bass on various tracks and Indian vocals, violin, sakuhachi flute, koto, Rhodes piano, electric bass on several specific tracks. All 9 tracks are between 5 and 7 minutes. The inspiration for the tracks is varied:
Mediteranean, Japanese, Indian, a Celtic Portuguese tune, Andalucian references (with some Spanish guitar and vocals and a groovy acoustic double bass), the medieval -often covered and interpreted- “Cantigas de Santa Maria”, and a raga-bossa (with jazzy piano) as homage to Brazilian violinist Baden Powell. Last track is co-written by the producer and mixer Edson X and has therefore more electronic beats than the other more “fusion”-like tracks.
A very good and perfect listening album! I used it a lot on a party once with much success !
