Saturday, April 26, 2008

Stephen Bellm - Raga Primavera

Hear The Track Here

I've long known that Chris Bishop (aka Project Overseer and sole prop of POP) and I were fellow travellers, musically and spiritually and - for him - thats a bloody good job too. One of my cast iron rules of reviewing is that I don't do streams. Listening to something online is a completely different experience to living with a track on a regular basis, and this month's Chris Bishop pick is a track I am forced to listen to online. MMmmOk, I thought, I swing by once or twice and see whether it catches my fancy. As if. See, I know Chris wouldn't do this to me unless he thought the track was that good.

So.....

In a comment about the song Chris writes 'this is an `audiophile` recording' and I couldn't agree more, but that does it cold technical justice. For nerds such as me and him (Ed: he and I?) that is food and drink indeed, but the extra ingredient has to be that the track lives and breathes. Raga Primavera is the kind of track that comes along every once in a while that will - quite truly - blow your socks off. Aurally, spacially and especially right between the ears. It's five minutes, twenty of sheer aural bliss.

Musically this is right up my street. An acutely realised blend of Indian and Western rhythms and instruments. Put it like this, this is the kind of track I wish I could make. If that doesn't tell you how much this track impressed me, let me go off on (yet another) tangent. I am very much into the sax, as shown by my championing of such leading lights as Jim Miller, and I love to hear it used intelligently in today's music. Welp, now young Jimbo better look to his laurels because I see Stephen Bellm coming from left field.

Awesome World Music. MUST HAVE (or listen anyway)

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