About

Recording live at Mumbai’s HMV studios, Singh married the past to the future—blending the ancient Indian tradition of ragas (a melodic framework, similar to a scale, from which musicians can improvise or compose) with pulsating, electronic dance beats. Released without fanfare, it faded into obscurity and Singh retired from recording to focus on private concerts, but that’s where the story begins…

Released in cooperation with Singh’s estate, Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat arrives on August 7th. The 10-track album was remastered by Johanz Westerman at Ballyhoo Studio Mastering and stretches across 2-LPs for the highest quality listening experience. The vinyl was pressed at Optimal Media and housed in a gatefold jacket that replicates the original artwork. — (via Label)

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What stands out most on Ten Ragas is Singh's comparatively original use of the TB-303. Even though it was designed to fill in for a bass guitar, the 303 was notoriously awkward when it came to reproducing conventional basslines—the box was much better suited to produce the otherworldly squelches of DJ Pierre. Singh, however, found a different way to employ the machine. Dayal notes that the TB-303's "glissando" function, the ability to slide from one note to another, makes it perfectly suited for the sort of raga melodies that run slippery up and down the scale. Married to rugged 808s and Terry Riley-style undulating keyboard solos, The result is a haunting, exotic prefiguration of acid's steely futurism, a bit like Kraftwerk live at the Taj Mahal, somehow summoned from the past but envisioning the future at the same time. — (via Resident Advisor)

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What is genre? Is it just a collection of musical parameters? When Charanjit Singh’s 1982 cult classic Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat was first reissued in 2010, most critics seemed to think so: Singh was hailed as a "pioneer of acid house." But what had his music to do with what Chicago trio Phuture would cook up in their home studio with the mangled sounds of a Roland TB-303 two years later? Indeed, framing Singh’s work as related to acid house in any way is at best narrow-minded or exoticist, and at worst disrespectful to both Phuture and Singh’s respective legacies.

Singh spells it out that disco was one of his influences and also used a TR-808 drum machine and the TB-303 bass synthesizer, the latter of which gave acid house its squelchy signature sound. However, the prolific Bollywood songwriter also adapted classical Indian ragas for this release, trying to—it’s right there in the title!—synthesize different traditions to find something new and unique, something entirely his own. He didn’t so much pave the way for someone else but is instead finding his own, kick by kick and one psychedelic bass note at a time.

Singh’s delicate balancing act between tradition and modernity, old forms and new technology results in an album that offers both innovation and fun—something that almost half a century later feels not at all generic, even though (or even precisely because) it draws on and shares some similarities with certain musical genres. — (via HHV Mag)

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— 2LP, reissued on Pear Translucent vinyl
— Original artwork with expanded gatefold and 20-page booklet
— Released in cooperation with Charanjit Singh's Estate