by Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale
Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale come together for the first time and create this album – Breathing Under Water. For the first time ever, both of them have a shared credit on the album cover which makes this album all the more special for them individually and the music lovers too.
The album has in all 13 tracks. Most of the tracks are more or less a minute long but beautiful! Had the tracks been a little longer, the overall effect and the get-up expected would have increased fourfold.
The music is beautifully blended. With Anoushka’s sitar and guitar as the centre of all tracks, Karsh seems to have beautifully composed the rest of the music for every track thus making the whole listening experience blissful! Although the use of words is minimum for most of the tracks, but when used it stands out absolutely.
With contributions from the finest musicians and artists like Sting, Norah Jones, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Shankar Mahadevan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Midival Punditz and Salim Merchant; the album all-in-all is remarkable. Anoushka’s instrumental piece stood out splendidly in every track.
With the kind of backgrounds Anoushka and Karsh come from, such an album was kind of expected from their end. This is definitely worth being a part of ones collection. People who aren’t greatly involved in classical music will also love this album for the way it is composed. Not very much away from the classical touch, the album is basically based on the Indian classical style giving it a complete western feel. It shows a great fusion of culture and music; keeping the soul of culture and the voice of music.
