Isolashun

Aditya Prakash’s debut solo album with its phonetic spelling of ‘isolation’ appears to be a direct reference to the pandemic and its impact on creativity for this young, award-winning Karnatic (South Indian) classical musician but, equally, it could also relate to what he describes as the ‘limits’ of Indian classical music. Perhaps in an effort to escape from that aesthetic, he creates a space where the harmonious is juxtaposed with agitation to be deliberately abrasive and jarring. For instance, the opening track is a city soundscape – a cocktail of traffic, car horns, birds and muffled voices, most unexpectedly followed by an exquisite classical song on the second track where one realises that Prakash has the kind of voice which forces one to go on listening – silky and calm but always teetering on the edge of restlessness. But, for many listeners, ‘XenoF.O.B’ will be perhaps the most accessible: a famous North Indian light-classical song composed by the ruler of Lucknow when he was exiled by the British that speaks of the pain of leaving one’s land which has been very wittily interspersed with extracts of US President Lyndon Johnson’s famous speech on passing the US Immigration Bill of 1965. Final track, ‘End’, returns us to the purely classical and is perhaps the most beautiful end to any album.