Tabla Beat Science

"Fed Ex was probably our biggest collaborator," laughed producer Bill Laswell about his newest recording venture, Tala Matrix. The maverick American corralled Indian and Ango-Indian percussionists - master musician Zakir Hussein, Trilok Gurtu, and Karsha Kale - under the name Tabla Beat Science for what is a nothing less than a beat fest. "It documents some of the places where tabla has found a home," offered Kale. "There's never been a record that's focused on the tabla itself before. And it's different, using the table as a tonal as well as a rhythmic instrument."

"There's never been a record that's focused on the tabla itself before. And it's different, using the table as a tonal as well as a rhythmic instrument."

So the nuances of the tabla, so often lost behind other instruments, became the main voice of the record, letting it carry the melody as well as the beat. Laswell had worked with Hussein, best known as an Indian classical musician and percussionist with groundbreaking Indian-jazz fusionists Shakti, before "but in breakbeat and different rhythms. I thought it'd be interesting to do a project with him..I talked to him about featuring the tabla as a solo instrument, then using contemporary beat construction and atmosphere." Although others came on board, the focus remained on Hussein, and his "virtuosic repetition and musicality," in Laswell's assessment. "No one playing rhythm even approaches him."

Hussein i s featured on five of the album's ten tracks, including "Magnetic," with sarangi player Ustad Sultan Khan. But it was very much a collaboration showing the range of the instrument, with Hussein coming from the traditional angle, Gurtu from jazz, while Singh and Kale represented the tablatronics of young Asian Underground dance scene, with drum'n'bass as almost their native rhythms.

"People sent things back and forth on tape, or used more modern technologies," explained Lawsell of the creative process. "I put the tracks together, commissioned some of the other people, and mixed some of the tracks." While the musicians were hardly ever in the same room at the same time "there's a consistency and sensibility that runs though it all. That wasn't planned; it just worked. It took a long time to get people coordinated, and I had to establish how the pieces all fitted together."

For Kale, who contributed "Palmistry," had previously worked with both Laswell and Singh. "it's a compilation of ideas. The way Bill put it together, it's a journey, and it's fitting it begins with Zakir. It shows how the influence he's had on the other tracks, and Trilok brings another dimension on "Big Brother," showing there are still other roads for the sound. This record is a first step."

Depending on schedules, the musicians might come together for a concert of the album in New York in November, and "it'll be set up as a band," said Kale, who's currently working on a solo record. "We're all multi-instrumentalists, and we'd get up and play together. So we'd see what interactions result between us."

Kale also hopes the disc might "open some minds in the Indian classical world. Many of them don't allow the music of the world to infiltrate their sound. But the people involved in this project makes the statement that it's okay, please follow through these doors."

And to Laswell, 45, who just finished producing a new disc for jazz man Herbie Hancock and remixing Carlos Santana's ‘70s devotional albums, Love, Devotion and Surrender and Illuminations, the release of Tala Matrix represents a beginning, or at least a jumping-off point, rather than an end. "We might have a remix, with up and coming DJs from the Asian Underground scene," he speculated. "Nothing I do is meant to be absolute; it's just information on tape. There's a beat processed and manipulated. There are endless possibilities. Anyone's take on it would be valid. In the end it's just waves of sound."

This article originally appeared on sonicnet.com

Tabla Beat Science

"There's never been a record that's focused on the tabla itself before. And it's different, using the table as a tonal as well as a rhythmic instrument."

Related Articles in the 'Global Artists' Category...