Navarasa: Nine Emotions

When the Scottish folk singer and guitarist James Yorkston, double bassist Jon Torne and the Indian sarangi maestro Suhail Yusuf Khan first got together for 2016's Everything Sacred, you might have imagined that the collaboration was a one-of project before the trio returned to their separate careers. Yet their debut worked so well that a year later came a second instalment, Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars. Now comes part three – and it's their most ambitious and fully developed work yet, taking as its theme the nine nava (emotions) or rasa (sentiments) that irrigate the arts of the sub-continent.

Each composition refects one of the navarasa – Shringara (love, beaut) through Hasya (laughter, mirth, comedy), Raudra (anger), Karuna (sorrow, compassion), Bibhatsya (disgust), Bhayanaka (horror, terror), Veera (heroism, courage), Adbutha (surprise, wonder) to Shanta (peace, tranquillit).The album's high point comes when the poetry of Robert Burns melds hypnotically and wondrously with raga and qawwali on the ten-minute long epic ‘Westlin Winds’, representing Adbutha. Yet each piece offers something fresh and unique as guitar, double bass and sarangi create an exquisite soundbed of drones, pulses, rhythms and melodies that draws on Sufism, traditional Scottish folk song and Indian light classical forms, and ties them together as if they were always meant to be natural companions.