Pace of Mind

Continuing to incorporate new sounds into their experimental jazz, the award-winning Belgian trio Slang have teamed up with sitar prodigy Purbayan Chatterjee for an album with a distinctly Indian touch. A child prodigy, Chatterjee won the President of India Award for Best Musician at just 15 years of age. He has since played with the likes of Zakir Hussain, Rakesh Chaurasia and Shankar Mahadevan and made a name for himself as a highly talented sitarist who is happy to work in various genres. Slang are three musicians who have determinedly bypassed musical borders ever since the group's inception 15 years ago; the collaboration proves to be Chatterjee's most unorthodox work yet, and is all the more impressive for being so.

The fast-paced ‘Run’ opens the album, but it's the switch to a more meditative style in ‘Karmasutra’ that's more convincing: the sax improvisations work well within this quasi-raga framework that is evocative of the romantic nighttime ragas and sexual energy associated with the track's title. Unfortunately the album, while enjoyable, never quite reaches the beauty of ‘Karmasutra’ again. It is followed by the more sedate ‘Oye’, which leads into the album's slightly underwhelming title-track, but the concluding ‘The Apu Trilogy’ includes some inspired percussion as well as a chance for the bansuri to shine.