Album Review: Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat by Charanjit Singh
Seldom do I come across an album that has me go searching the corners of the world to snag a copy on vinyl. That was the case with Charanjit Singh‘s Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat, first released back in 1982 on EMI India and more recently, restored and remastered edition in March 2010 on the Amsterdam/Mumbai-based label, Bombay Connection. I first heard about the album a couple of months ago through friends and blog post discussions centering on the use of the Roland Jupiter 8 synthesizer, TB-303 bass synthesizer and TR-808 drum machine by a Mr. Singh to create futuristic acid tracks on this 1982 release. I had come across the name once before in a Bombay Connection release A couple of listens to tracks on Youtube and I was hooked on the synthesized melodies, so-Detroit basslines and insanely-fast-for-the-times techno beats. The music sounded fresh, more like stuff produced in the current century rather than some 30 years ago! The tinny sounds emanating from my laptop speakers do not do justice to the sound and I had to get my hands on the sweet, sweet vinyl.
And so began the chase. We like to support local business so first a couple of e-mails and trips to all the local record haunts. No luck. In fact, none of the distributors for the local stores had the album listed on their catalogs. With no possibility of getting a copy in Madison, the search expanded to stores across the US but no luck there either. A couple of raised expectations but those withered away into the ether when I clicked on ‘submit order’… go figure? I had been trying to avoid shipping the album in from Europe, with the painful shipping charges and all, but had to succumb to the beat and ended up picking up the Bombay Connection release along with a stack of wax from Honest Jon’s in London… some Moritz Von Oswald, Scion, Rob Hood and more (:))… but I digress.
When the package from UK finally arrived at my door last Saturday morning, the system had been cooking for a couple of hours and I had the needle on the first side of the first record in no time – Raga Bhairav is a morning raga and starts off with a synthesized (is it a vocoder?) Om Namah Shivaya chant that soon descends into wobbly bass and trippy-fast beats. Each of the ragas on the album denotes a subtle mood or a specific emotion and are often associated with the time of day or season of the year. For example, the opening Raga Bhairav is a morning melody of the autumn season. Raga Megh Malhar, the first track on the B side, is associated with thunder and the onset of the monsoons. It is a treat to hear familiar ragas transformed into dancefloor tracks set in my favorite electronic music genre. While the sounds programmed by Charanjit Singh on the 808 and 303 sound simplistic and basic, they form the baseline for drums and bass on many of the house and techno music that has been released since. His skills on the keyboards are also evident on this album through the use of the Jupiter to create extended rhythmic compositions, hypnotic and foot-tapping melodies. The pressings sound delicious and have been in constant play at home. And the album comes with beautiful artwork and extensive liner notes that shed light on the life of the now 78 year old Mr. Singh.
It is a coincidence that identical Roland machine models were being used by Charanjit Singh in India at the same time that Juan Atkins was tweaking the controls with his Cybotron experiments in Detroit, though it would be another five years before Chicago’s DJ Pierre/ Phuture’s “Acid Tracks” EP is released and proclaimed as the first acid house recording. There was further controversy surrounding the Ten Ragas album with recent blog talk hinting at the whole affair being a big hoax perpetrated by Richard James a.k.a. Aphex Twin. The doubters out there should rest easy as this is the real deal.
While the inspiration might have been Disco (and you will hear plenty of it on this record), this album is truly an early masterpiece of house and techno rhythms. It is music that we are grateful to Charanjit Singh for having created… for having taken those two days away from his life as a Bollywood sessions player and marriage/party band leader to hole up at the HMV Studios in Bombay with his keyboard, drum machine and 303 and put down what he says “Frankly, this was the best thing I did… this was my own composition… if you do something of your own, that makes a difference.”
Further readings on the album and what inspired Charanjit Singh to come up with Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat in 1982 can be found at Geeta Dayal’s blog post
“Further thoughts on 10 Ragas To a Disco Beat”
The mp3 is available on Amazon here: Synthesizing – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat
Get your copy on vinyl at Bombay Connection (also have high quality digital formats available) or at Honest Jon’s Records (London).
Update: Forced Exposure just got back to me with an e-mail stating they have a vinyl copy back in stock… get it here.
