Shobhakar, Anupam - Liquid Reality CD
SKU
AGSR 09
Anupam Shobhakar - double-neck fretted/fretless electric guitars
Utsav Lal- piano
Ben Parag - vocals
Satoshi Takeishi - drums, percussion
Swaminathan SelvaGanesh - voice, ghatam, kanjeera, mridangam
Santiago Leibson - piano
Ona Kirei - vocals
Chris Saravino - drums
Gumbi Ortiz - percussion
“Growing up in Bombay, India, Anupam Shobhakar scrutinized the fretboard sorcery of Western shred guitarists like Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Allen Holdsworth. After witnessing a life-changing performance by the great sarod master Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the aspiring teen took up the North Indian instrument and eventually established a flourishing career that took him around the globe. But Shobhakar always dreamed of bringing together the two distinct sounds that so deeply inspired him.
While he stuck with the sarod and built his musical career around it, Shobhakar’s idea to fuse styles lingered in the background. The solution required a breakthrough, though. “It was brewing in my subconscious,” he recalls, “and it came to me in a dream.” Shobhakar envisioned a double-neck electric guitar with both fretted and fretless necks, providing access to both traditional electric guitar techniques as well as a way to translate the vocabulary of the sarod to guitar. While this is a rare but not completely unheard-of combination of instruments, as a left-handed player, the ideal instrument simply didn’t exist. He commissioned a custom guitar and immediately unlocked his sound.
The album’s compositions reflect a stunning range of influences, from mystic Sufi ghazals to progressive jazz-rock, and features a musical lineup of global masters including pianists Utsav Lal and Santiago Liebson, kanjeera player Swami Selva Ganesh, vocalists Ona Kirei and Ben Parag, and percussionists Satoshi Takeishi, Chris Savarino and Gumbi Ortiz.
Guitarist John McLaughlin and Shakti have been a constant musical inspiration for Anupam, and Liquid Reality pays tribute to those guiding lights with “La Dance de Bonheur”, a breathtaking reinvention of the Shakti classic.”