karsh

Trance music lives and dies for the same reasons. When the aural images it presents are too concrete, you know full well how you're expected to react: to close your eyes blissfully and depart this material plane. The beauty of good electronica is in its non-linear abstraction. Karsh Kale has a hard time differentiating between the two on Realize, his solo debut. His world dance calls primarily on Indian music, but rarely does so without pointing out this fact, latching onto an Americanized distillation of its original culture in order to produce its exotica-fueled fusion.

The new elements that Kale brings to the mix are his experience as an electronic musician and an unabashedly Western melodic sensibility. He excels far more at the former than at the latter, the hypnotic swirl of "Conception" easily standing out over the pedestrian pop of "Light Up The Love" and "Deepest Blue." On tracks like "Distance" (also the album's first single), one wishes that Kale would abandon the rising vocals and echoed flutes in favor of the steady bed that the song rests on. Generally, Kale could benefit from more patience, as he seems to often go for a quick and easy release where the music could be better served by a slow percolation. By drawing mostly on Indian music, Kale must come up with a more austere reinterpretation of the genre - his grooves often failing to hypnotize in their eagerness to exhibit their unity.

On Realize, Kale brings together an international crew of musicians including some leading players of Indian classical music - most notably the great Sultan Khan, the world's unchallenged master of the sarangi (a box-shaped cello) who actually makes a rare vocal appearance on "Satellite" and on the softly chiming "Light Up the Love." Two leading bansuri (flute) players grace the recording as well: India's Ajay Prasanna and the well-known American Steve Gorn. Meanwhile the song "Satellite" features vocals in Amharic by Ethiopian pop sensation Gigi. (Kale plays on Gigi's new Laswell-produced CD available on Palm too.) The question repeats, but there's no reply - at least not in the lyrics. It's Kale's blend of soaring raga vocals and steadily building electric guitars that gives the answer. "The singer Shahid Siddiqui wrote that," he explains. "We've collaborated for years, and he knew where I was coming from, so he came up with that line for me." It's not a bad line for Kale who's worked with Moroccan trance musician Hassan Hakmoun, scored the acclaimed film Chutney Popcorn, and released an EP called Classical Science Fiction from India. He has taken threads from rock, raga, dub and world fusion, and made a single design that is clearly his own.
With Realize, Karsh Kale is ready to jump-start the Asian Massive movement. It's a sound that goes well beyond the confines of London's South Asian Underground. "These musicians are in India, Japan, all over the States," Kale says; "it's a category of artists that represents a whole world." Realize shows that the music can be massive and still fly. - Jim