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Alone

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Vatan Singh Rajan

Label: Asli Music
Released: 2025
Duration: 00:17:13
Views: 70

Tracks

And Now The Queen; I Am a Microphone; Musashi; Prelude I - La Colombe

Personnel

Album Description

Acclaimed drummer and composer Vatan Singh Rajan’s highly anticipated debut album, ‘Alone’, named for ‘Thelonious Alone in San Francisco’, comes to shelves over 3 years after its recording in May 2022.

Written, performed, and produced as an entirely solo effort on homemade instruments and microphones during the COVID-19 pandemic, the album sees Vatan double on piano on ‘And Now the Queen’ (Carla Bley) and ‘La Colombe’ (Olivier Messiaen), and delve into cymbal metallurgy and Rōkyoku musical storytelling with ‘I Am a Microphone’ and ‘Musashi’.

Atmospheric, meditative, and complex; the album is a nuanced divergence from a career as a steady jazz sideman, exploring the intersection of experimentalism, spectralism, and solo performance.

1 - And Now the Queen
Vatan Singh Rajan’s reimagining of Carla Bley’s 5-bar masterwork sees the drummer double on piano, playing both instruments simultaneously with minimal overdubs. The performance blends spectral atmosphere with jazz improvisation in a tribute the composer, who passed between this album’s recording and its release.

2 - I Am a Microphone
Vatan Singh Rajan’s composition combines metallurgical knowledge from years making and modifying cymbals, with a moving microphone’s proximity effect to elicit pitch, depth, and timbral variety from them. Presented in first-person’s perspective from the point of view of the microphone, and paired with deep study of the jazz tradition - particularly Tony Williams - the recording encourages a deeper look at what cymbals can be.

3 - Musashi
Featuring drum set and rainstick with no overdubs, the composition ‘Musashi’ sees composer/performer Vatan Singh Rajan attempt to tell the story of the Duel at Ganryūjima from behind a drum set. The rapid bass drum ostinato and drum motifs are a joint tribute to ‘Traps’ cinema drummers of the early 20th century and the musical storytelling of Japanese Rakugo and Rōkyoku.

4 - Prelude I: La Colombe
The final track of the album is ironically a prelude. Doubling on drums and piano again, Vatan Singh Rajan performs one of Olivier Messiaen’s first compositions. Characterized by Messiaen as ‘Orange with violet veins’, the performance sees it juxtaposed with drum set improvisation, influenced by Vatan’s mentor Bill Stewart.

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