- A hybrid approach to Hindustani classical music that uses drone, noise and doom metal to dramatic effect.
- North India's classical music, also known as Hindustani classical, is tender at its core. Even at its most sorrowful and passionate, rhythms escalate to powerful, often overwhelming, peaks but they never get dark or assault the senses. This poignant quality is present across acid house, trance and jazz records that sample raags (melodic systems that define the genre) but here, it's put to the ultimate test by Bay Area artist Only Now, AKA Kush Arora.
On Indian Unclassical Vol. 1, raags are mutated from their original form and juxtaposed against doom metal, a tsunami of noise and moody drone. Split between dark ambient, experimental rave and slo-mo industrial, the nine-track album recontextualises raags with wild abandon. These ancient frameworks are typically associated with particular moods and specific times of day but Arora, an affiliate of Club Yeke and Infinite Machine, disrupts those structures and places them in an environment of chaos, upheaval and grief. Purists might frown at this bold experiment but that doesn't faze the artist. "I was looking to really shatter the conventions," he told me.
After obtaining interpretations of classic raags from Hindustani classical musicians, Arora dissected their recordings on Ableton, playing with tempo, effects and re-tuning. Seoul-based label Tonal Unity follows a similar practice but in the context of Korean music. In addition to the sitar and tabla, Indian Unclassical Vol. 1 features the bansuri, a bamboo flute, and the santoor, a kind of zither. These instruments offer pockets of warmth amid frenzied sonics but the entire LP still teems of anguish, battle and woe. Even the artwork, an image of a man surrounded by flames, is intense. That's because Arora wanted to capture a sense of pandemic-fuelled despair in his native country, India, as well as the US.
"I wanted it to be dramatic as hell," he explained. "Sitting and watching your homeland have funeral pyres is heartbreaking, let alone all the bullshit happening on the ground in the past two years in America during Covid-19." He's referring to mass cremations across India during the country's second Covid-19 wave last year as well as rampant racial inequalities stateside. "I had to channel it... I wanted folks to feel all that internal conflict."
These frustrations are best embodied in "Glory" and "Time Suffocation." On the former, the bansuri's piercing notes hold firm against a cacophony of wind whipped noise, wails and static that evoke scenes of a destructive tornado. With its high-pitched timbre and echo effect, the bansuri, played by Sheela Bringi, is a ray of light amid the wall of brutal sound.
"Time Suffocation," meanwhile, invokes a chase sequence as the santoor's crescendoing rhythms go head to head with distorted cries and explosions. Even the album's most ambient tracks possess a frenetic energy. "Vision Through" is rife with melodrama, channeling the suspense of a villainous scheme on the cusp of execution. In response to these tensions, the hazy drone on tracks like "Ghosts of Regret" and "Last Gap" hangs still in the air like jungle humidity, offering remorse and lament.
Indian Unclassical Vol. 1 is a heavy piece of work but it's not all doom and gloom. Two club-oriented tracks show off Arora's love for spliced percussion. "Slit Ties" and "Cavern Trance" pair the intricate tabla playing of Robin Sukhadia, AKA Tablapusher, with a background of whirring synths, manipulated vocal samples and other dystopian elements.
There's so much movement throughout the LP that it could score an interpretive dance performance. Its emotional flow–starting with havoc and concluding on a gentle sitar–also feels apt for creative storytelling. In pairing traditional Indian instruments with menacing electronics, Arora has crafted an exquisite study in opposites–gentle and harsh; demure and hostile–that sets a high bar for future volumes in the Indian Unclassical series as well as the broader industrial underground.
Tracklist
01. Time Suffocation feat. Kamaljeet Ahluwalia
02. Slit Ties feat. Robin Sukhadia
03. Glory feat. Sheela Bringi
04. Vision Through feat. Kamaljeet Ahluwalia
05. Cavern Trance feat. Robin Sukhadia
06. Inverted Memories feat. Rajib Karmakar
07. Ghosts Of Regret feat. Rajib Karmakar
08. Fires, Bodies, Slow Burn, No Wood feat. Sheela Bringi
09. Last Gasp feat. Rajib Karmakar