Tabla Beat Science — Live in San Francisco at Stern Grove

With the surfacing of Asian underground and Bill Laswell’s long-time interest in Indian music, he first made an ambient CD called City Of Light and shortly after that the drum ‘n’ bass album Lo. Def Pressure. On that last one he used tabla rhythms (‘tala’) as a matrix for drum ‘n’ bass patterns. Tala Matrix also was the title of Laswell’s follow-up project Tabla Beat Science: a collaboration with tabla-player Zakir Hussain. On this album contemporary ‘tabla ‘n’ bass' musicians like Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale and jazz drummer Trilok Gurtu added their ideas to the east/west fusion.

Tabla Beat Science turned out to be more than a one-off project and they performed in San Fransisco with musicians from the first studio record (Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan, Karsh Kale) and guests like the Ethiopian singer Gigi, DJ Disk (formerly Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Giant Robot II), Fabian Asultany and Midival Punditz. As I expected the live performance is much more energetic and exciting than the studio-effort (although that wasn't bad either).

The 16 minute tabla/sarangi duet Taaruf is pretty much classical Indian music but the second track Sacred Channel shows a more modern interpretation of Indian music. A fierce mixture of jazz, dub, drum ‘n’ bass and the classical Indian tradition sounds amazing. Kale’s high-energy drumming, Laswell’s low-end dub-bass, various ambient sweeps and the tablas make me wish I was there. On this live-album an extra ‘alien’ element is brought in, in the form of Ethiopian vocals by Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw. Laswell seems to invite her to every project he’s working on these days (ranging from Herbie Hancock to a new Buckethead record that’s in the works). Although I’m not particularly fond of her singing I can live with it because the rest is so good and the duet Nafakeñ with the vocals of Khan works fairly well. Turntable virtuoso DJ Disk jumps in on Tala Matrix and again: it works! Not afraid to play with any style he scratches his way though a few songs on disc 2 interacting with the tablas of Hussain.

This band is truly on fire during the whole show and there were no overdubs or edits in the studio. The magic is captured perfectly. This is what you might call ‘world-music’: a harmonious clash of Ethiopian, Pakistani, Indian, British, Jamaican and (Afro-)American cultures. Sometimes dark and brooding, other times devotional and full of light.

Like on the first album, a painting of the grafitti artist Doze Green tops it off with a visualisation of ancient tradition and modern hi-tech with 'street-cred'. I think this live disc is even better than the studio album and I hope to see it live someday myself (although I’m not holding my breath).