Various : Ustad Sultan Khan -Rare elements remixes (5 Point Records)

Asian downbeat albums are a risky enterprise. Talvin Singh is perhaps the most respected artist of the genre but it's sadly his status as genre inaugurator that has kept his career going. Only Nitin Sawhney has been able to efficiently fuse eastern influences with western beats. Just look at his Prophesy album, where Sawhney created a collections of songs that had their own lives and identities, rather than being burdened by the widespread impetus to follow the formula : create downbeat track, sprinkle intensively and often randomly with sitars, tablas and Indian vocals, release.

This formula has made the Asian downbeat genre a bland, well-rounded, edge-less and mostly monotonous affair. It may be that Westerners are not used to Asian beats and melody patterns and fail to discern the suble variations between songs -like a non-jazz fan trying to tell one Sun Ra track from another. Fact is that Asian downbeat releases have a mountain to climb to impress a Western audience.

The Ustad Sultan Khan remixes manage to get a fair way up the mountain trail. Khan is one of the India's most respected sarangi players and has performed with Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman and uhm, Talvin Singh. New label 5 Point Records picked his music as the basis for their Rare Elements remix series, in which 'master musicians' are remixed by 'the world's top'. In this case the likes of Joe Clausell, Thievery Corporation, Radar One and Nickodemus & Osiris.

The album starts out very promisingly, as veteran New York house producer Clausell turns Aja Maji into a beautiful flowing tracks where well-balanced tablas and other percussion is blended with a pleasant floating vocal duet and synths. Clausells productions have always been quite percussive and his affinity for African drums and rhythms makes the transition to their Indian counterparts smooth -and towards the end, Aja Maji drifts towards the mood on some of Femi Kuti's slower songs. Clausell returns for another equally good remix, a more upbeat house rhythm where tablas are indiscernable from congas.

Dons of downbeat Thievery Corporation take over and deliver a slow and draggin approach to Tarana, rotating a three cord melody and, like Clausell, letting instrumentation and vocals float above. This works very nicely, as Thievery Corporation avoid the pitfall of focusing on a strong Asian theme and forgetting everything else, but create a nicely sleepy song. Beware, don't listen to this while driving!

Radar One then almost shuns the Indian elements completely, throwing in a little scratching, English vocals and faux-sax samples to create, well.. a very Thievery Corporation-like tune. It sounds great, but seems slightly out of place.

The album takes a tumble with the Nickodemus & Osiris remix of Jaadu. The simple guitar-based hip hop beat sound unsettlingly like the beat on Eminem's Lose yourself and the duo fall head first into the Asian downbeat trap, as they take a none-too-good standard beat and just add Indian elements without integrating them properly. It sounds annoyingly like a bedroom producer who knows nothing of Indian music and has just bought one of those prefabricated Indian-sample CDs from his local music store. The same thing can be said of Brainpolluter's Majhi Re remix and to some extent Radar One's remix of Mether Ali.

Ralphie Rosario's fares better with Maula, which leans towards a driving tribal-house style. A traditional solution, but Rosario does manage to create a pleasant balance between rhythms and melody. Brainpolluter gets back on track with a nicely atmospheric remix of Caravan.

The Khan Rare Elements remix album runs the entire gamet of the Asian downbeat genre -from irritating fragmentation and superficiality to beautiful deep cuts that rank among the genre's best. Crucially, the album avoids succumbing to the blandness and monotony that befalls so many other releases. One of the better Asian downbeat releases around and a very promising first from 5 Points Records.

Review by Nicolai Hartvig

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