Sand and Foam

Last time sarod players Amaan Ali & Ayaan Ali Bangash appeared in Songlines it was in a distinguished fusion project with classical violinist Elmira Darvarova and their father Amjad Ali Khan. This is something rather different. Kabir Sehgal is a multi-Grammy award-winning American producer and author of Indian heritage. His projects have feel-good themes like Legion of Peace, a jazz album inspired by Nobel laureates or Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom, both rather shallow offerings.

Sand and Foam is inspired by the writings of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese writer (in Arabic and English) most famous for The Prophet. Several track titles are taken from Gibran works, but anything more about the inspiration isn’t remotely clear. Each track has a relentless electronic beat, phrases repeated ad nauseam and some sarod and other instrumental offerings scattered here and there. It’s only the final track, ‘A Tear and a Smile’, from a poem about happiness and loss giving meaning to life, that has some emotional depth, mainly thanks to the vocals of Sudha Ragunathan and one or both of the brothers on sarod. Otherwise not so much Sand and Foam as Hot Air and Vapidity.