Bombay Dub Orchestra: Bombay Dub Orchestra

In the late 1990s, the UK-based team of composer/arranger/pianist Andrew T. Mackay and producer Garry Hughes (Art of Noise, Sly & Robbie, and the particularly pertinent Pink Floyd Orchestral Project) traveled to India to record Bombay's top session players for a project by Spellbound, a duo from India based in London. "I produced and Andrew arranged, Hughes recalls. "It was a fantastic experience recording these guys, and on the plane coming home we thought how great it would be to make an orchestral chill-out record with these players. In 2005, the duo returned to Bombay to spend their days recording a 28-piece string section (violins, violas and cellos) and their nights recording expert players of classical Indian instruments (bansuri, sarangi, tabla and sitar) and traditional Indian vocalists.

Bombay Dub Orchestra is the "orchestra chill-out record constructed from these recordings. It honors the essential contemplative nature of its source material—Indian classical music—and sparkles with unusual and exquisite beauty. The subtle electronics, pulses and beats underneath such tunes as "Compassion complement its Indian components, instead of overpowering them.

Solitary violin steps out of the mist overlying "Rare Earth like a solitary eagle's majestic, solitary flight; the soaring North African vocals from Khalid Kharchaf featured in "The Berber of Seville conjures the same mythical, mystical imagery. "To the Shore traverses a melody that is simply, sadly, ethereally beautiful. Though the spotlight mainly (and properly) shines on the Indian instrumentalists, Mackay merits mention as a Harold Budd-like impressionistic pianist on "Sonata and "Remembrance, a two-minute instrumental prayer pregnant with the beauty of becoming that closes the CD.

Okay, that's the "Bombay Orchestra part. The "Dub part comes from the package's second CD, remixes of eight these twelve tracks rendered in dub style, several featuring more exotic names and equally exotic musical visions, such as "The Berber of Seville Orchestral Version: Father Mackay's Celestial Vision, "Rare Earth: The Forest of Thieves Mix and "Dust: The Pigment of Your Imagination Mix.

A dream deferred is not always a dream denied.

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