Blue Raag

A musical melting-pot, filtering Indian and Indonesian idioms, scales and off-kilter time signatures through blues-laced jazz, Blue Raag is the first offering on disc from the Netherlands-based quartet Samasa. Led by singer-pianist Sinta Wullur and guitarist-sarod player Martijn Baaijens – both are classically trained and composers – the foursome is fleshed out by the considerable muscle of rock and jazz drummer Kim Weemhoff and throbbing blood-pulse of double bassist Daniel van Huffelen. All but Weemhoff have studied in India and it's clear the group's engagement with the music of the sub-continent is sincere and searching. No less so their borrowing from Indonesia's gamelan tradition and the bedrock jazz accents and riffs that bind together these often spellbinding improvisatory performances.

The opening five-part ‘Bhairav Blues’ sets the cross-fertilised tone with slowly rising temperatures and increasingly extravagant displays of technique. Curious at first listening, repeated encounters become rich and rewarding. There's something soothing in the cabaret torch-song quality of ‘Amar Milon Lagi’, lyrical blending of raga and scat singing in ‘Lady Sings Charukeshi’, something primal and wild about the big-boned ‘Kali's Guns’, and something ineffably deep in the mysterious ‘Kar Milono Chao Birohi’. Intelligent and involving, Blue Raag suggests Samasa have far to go.