Sarathy Korwar & UPAJ Collective release brilliant spiritual jazz recording on Night Dreamer

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Sarathy Korwar & UPAJ Collective release brilliant spiritual jazz recording on Night Dreamer

Since the breakthrough of his 2016 album Day to Day, US-born, Indian-raised, London-based drummer, percussionist, composer Sarathy Korwar has been releasing some of the most forward-thinking records, fusing together East African, Sufi and Indian influences with jazz, electronic music, and hip-hop. On his most recent release for the Netherland-based Night Dreamer label, he teams up with an all-star group of musicians, under the name UPAJ Collective (“UPAJ” means “to improvise” inHindi), for a fully improvised spiritual jazz session.

As with all Night Dreamer releases, the album was recorded direct-to-disc at Artone Studios on July 6, 2019. Where that recording approach natural creates an in-the-moment sense of adventure for both the band and the listener, Korwar and the group, following some collective breathing exercises (learnt from Korwar’s mother and Wim Hof), decided to take it a step further and fully improvise the set with almost no preconceived directions, or what the drummer states as the “spirit of spontaneous improvisation.”

The result of this approach really couldn’t have come out any better, with Korwar and a superb cast of musicians featuring saxophonist Tamar Osborn, violinist Achuthan Sripathamanathan, guitarist Giuliano Modarelli, and keyboardist Alistair MacSween, creating four brilliant tracks that fuse together hypnotic spiritual jazz grooves with authentic Indian classical music. The recording also features a great dance floor friendly remix of the the album’s opener “So said Said” by Osunlade.

Overall, this is an incredible recording that truly captures the beautiful nature of improvisational music with a group that is working as one cohesive, almost telepathic unit. Clocking in at over 50-minutes, this might be the best Night Dreamer recorded session to date, which says a lot given the high quality of releases that label has been putting out over the past couple of years. Highly recommended!