MUSIC REVIEW: Drum Invasion

An extremely talented tabla player, who has accompanied almost all the stalwarts of Indian classical music, Bickram Ghosh is no stranger to experimentation. It has been a while since he moved from the traditional domain of an accompanist to taking a centrestage, moving from being a tabla player to a percussionist, who loves to play anything he can lay his hands on. And that itch, one feels, could be both a curse and a boon.

Drum Invasion, Bickram's new album (he has added an extra 'C' to his name) is a decent showpiece of his multifarious talent. Ghosh has dabbled freely in many genres of music: hip-hop, techno and of course, folk and classical. Instruments you can hear in this album include: mridangam, sarangi, drums, guitars, ghatam and sarod. Vocal sampling or mouth percussion or Bol-Scat, as Ghosh calls it, pepper some of the tracks too.

All the musicians featured in this album are individually talented. But the compositions rarely go beyond the here and now. They make for interesting listening, but have none of the riveting or lingering quality that mark the classics in the genre of fusion or world music.

Melody is clearly not Ghosh's forte, so whenever there is an alap or an interlude thrown in, or even keyboards, the effect is quite disappointing to the point of being tacky. There is nothing in the rhythmic explorations, the structure or the melody that comes as new to the listeners of fusion or world music. At times, one feels, the tracks are just an assembly line display of the various musical instruments Ghosh and his friends have mastered.

This is not to take away from the effort that has gone into the making of the album. One only wishes Ghosh, who has been lucky enough to have sampled some of the greatest musicians of the world first hand, went beyond skimming the surface of this music.

You could say Drum Invasion is a populist album, maybe not for the discerning.

Album: Drum Invasion
Artiste: Bickram Ghosh
Price: Rs 299
Released by: Music Today