Track Listing

1. Empty Hands
2. Distance
3. Tour Guide
4. Anja
5. Home
6. Satellite
7. One Step Beyond
8. Saajana
9. Conception
10. Light Up The Love
11. Deepest Blue
12. Fabric
13. Longing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79798 in Music
• Released on: 2001-07-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .18 pounds

Album Description
Karsh Kale (pronounced: Kursh Kah-lay), the leading U.S. figure in the Asian Massive movement infuses the traditional sounds of ancient India with post- millennial electronic dance styles such as trance and drum'n'bass. Blending sarangi, flutes and vocals with hypnotic electronica on Realize, his Six Degrees debut, Kale carves his own unique niche in pan-global music. Karsh Kale has previously collaborated with artists such as DJ Spooky, Herbie Hancock and acclaimed producer Bill Laswell, whose revolutionary Tabla Beat Science project featured Kale alongside tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain.

Amazon.com
Karsh Kale's debut, Realize, ups the ante and spins his scene--the Asian Massive movement--into gold with a stunning coming together of electronic dance music, Indian folk and raga, and classical. Both songwriter and percussionist, Kale has long been a compatriot of Talvin Singh and has played with Bill Laswell's intriguing < a href="/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/210353/">Tabla Beat Science project. Realize is grounded in layers of percussive wonder, swaddled in guitars, cello, flutes, and supreme vocals, then flipped upside down and alchemically reimagined inside out and sideways. A bhajan becomes a drum-and-bass song, as well as the other way around. The beautiful and rhythmically complex "Saajana," written in the Indian folk bhajan tradition, is exemplary of just this. The sound of infinite bird wings beating upward to the heavens, Realize is a sonic circus of right on. --Paige La Grone

About the Artist
Realize may be Karsh Kale's first full-length solo release, but the percussionist/songwriter has already established himself as one of the leaders of the Asian Massive movement. Karsh Kale (pronounced Kursh Kah-lay) cut his teeth playing tabla and electronic percussion and has since collaborated with America's renegade super-producer Bill Laswell on Tabla Beat Science which assured Kale's place in the burgeoning world dance scene. He leads one of New York's coolest ensembles, and his monthly spins at Paisley and Joe's Pub are some of the hottest tickets on the New York scene. Kale, who was born of Indian parents and grew up in the US, has long played Indian classical music on the tabla, the paired hand drums of northern India. On Realize, he comes up with an irresistible fusion of both East and West. "I don't think of them as two different worlds anymore," he explains. "This record expresses how they've become one world for me." With his trademark electronic tabla sound propelling the songs along, Kale weaves strands of Indian ragas through one of the most distinctive albums of electronica to come along since the legendary Anokha collection launched the career of his longtime colleague Talvin Singh and the Asian Underground. Kale does more than simply incorporate Indian folk and classical elements into electronica, he actually approaches the songs the way an Indian musician would. "The songs on the record were created to be performed," he says, "and we treat them the way Indian musicians traditionally do – looking at the songs as a repertoire that can be reinterpreted. So a bhajan (a type of Indian folk song) can be a drum'n'bass tune and vice versa." The song "Saajana," for example, is written in the bhajan style and grooves along in a modern, electronically-enhanced re-creation of the trancey rhythms of Indian folk music. On it Indian singer Vishal Vaid spins a lovely tune with synthesizer, piano, and drum programming accompaniment. Like much of Realize, the song suggests that the same things that make a hit in Bengal make for a club fave in New York – namely, a strong beat and a great melody. The first single from the album is the track "Distance," where Falguni Shah sings a graceful, understated melody while Karsh Kale proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the tabla is an instrument that is as ageless as it is ancient. An electronic tabla break halfway through the song drives the point home and further blurs the distinction between old and new, Eastern and Western. "Distance" has already been remixed four times, once by Kale himself and in a series of very different productions by English dancemaster Banco de Gaia and fellow Asian Massive producers Midival Punditz and Capt. Groove, both based in India. "That's my favorite part of the whole project," Kale says, "putting a song together over a period of months and then seeing it come back as something completely different." He likens it again to the way Indian musicians will approach songs in a classical raga performance. "It's all about someone reinterpreting your work. What I got back were not just remixes, they really re-made the song." On Realize, Kale brings together an international crew of musicians including some leading players of Indian classical music – most notably the great Sultan Khan, the world's unchallenged master of the sarangi (a box-shaped cello) who actually makes a rare vocal appearance on "Satellite" and on the softly chiming "Light Up the Love." Two leading bansuri (flute) players grace the recording as well: India's Ajay Prasanna and the well-known American Steve Gorn. Meanwhile the song "Satellite" features vocals in Amharic by Ethiopian pop sensation Gigi. (Kale plays on Gigi's new Laswell-produced CD available on Palm too.) Karsh Kale still plays classical Indian music and that influence helps set his music apart. Unlike so much club music, Realize is full of long, sinuous, finely-crafted melodies. In the song "Fabric," a florid raga melody supports a simpler, English-language lyric: "A thousand and one designs intertwine. Which one is mine?" The question repeats, but there's no reply – at least not in the lyrics. It's Kale's blend of soaring raga vocals and steadily building electric guitars that gives the answer. "The singer Shahid Siddiqui wrote that," he explains. "We've collaborated for years, and he knew where I was coming from, so he came up with that line for me." It's not a bad line for Kale who's worked with Moroccan trance musician Hassan Hakmoun, scored the acclaimed film Chutney Popcorn, and released an EP called Classical Science Fiction from India. He has taken threads from rock, raga, dub and world fusion, and made a single design that is clearly his own. With Realize, Karsh Kale is ready to jump-start the Asian Massive movement. It's a sound that goes well beyond the confines of London's South Asian Underground. "These musicians are in India, Japan, all over the States," Kale says; "it's a category of artists that represents a whole world." Realize shows that the music can be massive and still fly.

Customer Reviews

an important step
some important things: Karsh Kale's realize crew have created an important recording in the world of asian music. This might be the first real melding of classical traditional hindustani music and DnB--so much so that the combination aspect of it disssappears. There is a new synthesis brewing here, and it's an updated form of classical music; while the forms of raga aren't entirely maintained, and the pieces are incredibly short when compared to classical indian pieces... they're in there. There are "quick" alaaps, rhythmic developments that mirror gats, and other classical forms as well. What I hear is nothing short of the seed of NEW CLASSICAL MUSIC.

Now, with that said, it does have its drawbacks. parts of the recording don't transcend the recording process; they feel stitched together, and it takes a while for some peices to become the sum of their parts. And there are moments when it just seems that a piece is meandering. However, this is basically a debut record, and we can't justly hold that against the musicians.

Another important thing: besides the bhajan done by. Ud. Sultan Khan, there isn't a trace of Indian folk music--especially Bhangra--on this record. No Dhol, no jump up beats. Nor is it the rhythmic marathon of tala matrix.

There's something new being born on this record; it's gonna take a while for this 'modernization' of indian classical tradition to develop, but there's a hell of a lot of promise. keep even more of an eye out for this guy.

Good Start But Lots of Room To Improve
I picked up Kale's CD a few months before seeing him perform with Tabla Beat Science at Stern Grove in San Francisco. His performance live outshone his studio effort. To me, "Realize" was full of potential - tracks that seemed like they were going to set out to be incredible and instead ended up being repetetive, lengthy, and not so creative. In this whole "Asian Massive" movement, I wouldn't rank this CD as the one to get. I'd definitely put MIDIval Punditz' self-titled CD and Talvin Singh's "Ha" much higher - nevertheless, Kale is very promising and I've faith that he'll only improve moving forward.

gotta get it...
At first hearing, the obvious comparison to Talvin Singh's recent release, "HA! can be made. Kale weaves both traditional Indian instrumentations, indian vocals, and varying breakbeats. Some of the tracks are very well made, inspired, and otherwise magnificient. Others seem abit contrived almost boring. Personally, I found T. Singh's album more compelling and more cohesive as a whole. Nonetheless, I do not think that this album is "just another asian underground" album. (Moreover I think Cheb i Sabbah embodies the "Orientalism" of Edward Said..ie: he is a poseur who ultimately knows little of the music and the culture. He should stick to spinning Khaled) I have seen Kale perform this album live twice in NYC (at Mutiny and Joe's Pub) and can attest to the fact that it sounds even better live. I think that the fact that this album not merely studio-piece is what makes this album interesting. It is meant to be performed, with a band, live...and not simply thrown in vinyl and waxed all night. Moreover I think Kale is a decent tabla player and a very decent percussionist. This album is not necessarily "groundbreaking" as Nitin Sawhney or Trilok Gurtu or for that matter Talvin Singh's works have been, but it certainly a "must have" for those who appreciate Asian Electronica/Asian Massive/Asian-inspired electronic breakbeat dub fusion/(or whatever you want to call it...just don't call it techno)