SAAGARA - 3
“Avenues for exploration that touch upon minimalism and drones, as well focusing on the power of rhythm.“ -- The Quietus
Saagara’s new album 3, is the third installment of this acclaimed collaboration between Polish producer/multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel and four virtuosic musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) and violinist Mysore N. Karthik.
It’s a buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms and pulsating electronic patterns. An album of deeply transformative compositions that navigate tradition and experimentation as they move towards the universal.
Saagara’s 3 is released via tak:til, Glitterbeat’s instrumental music imprint, and home to artists such as Brìghde Chaimbeul, Širom, Jon Hassell and Park Jiha. Tak:til loosely navigates Hassell’s idea of "Fourth World" musics, musics that blur the divide between (so-called) futurists and (so-called) traditionalists.
Wacław Zimpel works with a diverse array of music. The Warsaw-based musician/producer started out playing free jazz with artists like Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake and Joe McPhee. Later, he went from minimalism inspired albums (Lines) to folk-trance collaborations (Saagara) to synth-buzzing solo releases, along the way developing a vivid electronic music language through collaborations with British electronic artists James Holden and Sam Shackleton (amongst others). The New York Times has aptly called him a “musical chameleon.”
“Now I think I feel more like a producer than an instrumentalist,” he admits. Zimpel’s most recent albums, the synth majesty of Massive Oscillations (2020) and the pandemic-era solo album Train Spotter (2023) - where field recordings of public transport were used as the starting point for pulsing electronic passages – seem to have clearly influenced the concept and working methods of Saagara’s third album, coming seven years after its predecessor 2 (2017).
The Saagara project was first initiated during a jam session in Poland more than a decade ago by Zimpel and one of the most prominent Indian percussionists Gitridhar Udupa (ghatam), and took further shape during his visit to India in 2012. With the 1976 album Shakti with John McLaughlin in mind, particularly its virtuosic blending of Western melodic-rhythmic concepts with Carnatic ones, Zimpel wanted to create something that would continue that ethos but with an individualized approach. His deep fascination with minimalism, tinged with electronics, helped shape the project’s concept as did the grooves and sounds of Carnatic music’s most prominent instruments. In Saagara, these instruments are played by the aforementioned Udupa, as well as Mysore N. Karthik on violin and Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) on percussion. Through the ensemble’s collective experimentation, the edgy rhythms of Carnatic music - one of India’s oldest musical traditions - became seamlessly synchronized with Zimpel’s clarinet and electronics and Karthik’s violin parts.
On 3 the music is not as contemplative as it was on the previous two albums. Acidic electronic post-club sounds now counterpoint the traditional instruments, and the instruments themselves are filtered through contemporary processing. This can be clearly heard on the album’s densely rhythmic opening track, “God of Bangalore.” “I think of this music as much more suited to places where people can dance than sit,” says Zimpel, who describes the album as: “interstellar folk.”
Saagara’s 3 is also more studio-based and conceptual. Zimpel devised electronic sequences and then got together in a Warsaw studio with Udupa, who began by adding konnakol (vocal percussion) rhythmic patterns to the sequences. Zimpel’s production grew from there – developing additional electronic textures, manipulating the sound of individual instruments, and deconstructing or reducing the instrument tracks altogether.
The contribution of new technology is significant: Zimpel received a Humanizer plugin from the British electronic producer James Holden, which allows him to combine sequencers with the natural timing of organically played drums. The software reads the natural pulse of the drummers, converts it into midi language, and sends that information to all the linked sequencers. From there, one can select how much of the two realms should be heard. “I was aiming to create an organic entity where there’s not this distinction between electronics, and some acoustic instruments added in, but that it’s just one organism,” says Zimpel.
As a result, the boundary between the acoustic and the electronic, the tradition and the future, is blurred. Sometimes, we may be unable to distinguish the genesis of the individual sounds. “For me, simply doing the same thing a second time is something I can’t get through,” Zimpel remarks. “I get bored quickly, I think that’s pretty much what that stems from.”
Saagara’s new album brings the ancient ritual of Carnatic music, a music that carries the listener from one state to another, into a dance with electronic music and its techniques, beats and synthesis. The whole thing unfolds in a cosmic trance; an inspired and buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms with pulsating electronic patterns.
