Guitarist, composer, and virtuoso sarodist Anupam Shobhakar sweeps us into a mesmerizing aural experience with his recent album on "Liquid Reality." It's a brilliant hour-long exploration where Eastern traditions meet Western innovation. Following his history-making 2023 release of "Raga Jhinjhoti on Fretless Guitar," the first time Indian classical music had ever been recorded on a fretless guitar, Shobhakar takes even further down the path towards innovative cross-cultural creativity with PURBO. At a time when music is often boiled down to bite-sized tracks and fleeting highs, Shobhakar delivers a project that should be taken as a cohesive, extended journey.
"Liquid Reality" is an experience that transcends simply listening to music; over seven tracks of meticulously crafted music, Shobhakar threads shimmering textures, hypnotic grooves, and soul-stirring melodies in a tapestry that defies genre. His fretless guitar, based on the precision of Indian classical ragas, sounds like something of a Hindu Kenny G, where jazz, rock, and world music meet with his headstrong and freewheeling imagination.
The smooth, ethereal structure takes the listener through evolving harmonic shades and light rhythmic pulses. Meanwhile, the warm, resounding hug of "Home" carries its solipsism in a much more palatable fashion; balancing fitful movie-soundtrack guitar and smoothed-over brass with a heart that hopes or pretends at greater sensitivity than the excessive other pieces on a spilled-alcohol image. These songs showcase Shobhakar's rare talent of being able to speak many musical languages seamlessly, but keeping every note profoundly personal. At 1 hour and 2 minutes in length, "Liquid Reality" is a sprawling yet coherent collection of tracks that could just as easily whisk you away on an uplifting journey as it could provide the perfect complement to the sounds of silence in the background.
An album name that encapsulates the whole work in a phrase is perfect, and "Liquid Reality" is just that. This is a place where musical boundaries merge, if not completely fall away. The east speaks to the west, the ancient balances the modern, and the fretless guitar is allowed to express its voice purely. These seven tracks play out more like chapters in a novel, paving the way for countless revisits to reveal their depth and beauty. Anupam Shobhakar is ranked among the most innovative and courageous musical voices of today. This album opens a gateway to a new reality where sonic flows are uninhibited and the experience of our world is fluid.
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