Date: October 6, 1996 (recording)
Release: India Archive Music #1042
Cover Art: view / download
Buy the Album
I first heard of Debashish Bhattacharya from guitar master Nels Cline, who raved about this album on the “What I’ve Been Listening to Lately” section of his website. Cline gushed,
“What a find this man is! He rocks!! Besides his amazing phrasing and melodic invention (common among scary Indian classical players…), he adds some chording and fingerstyle to his improvisations with great effectiveness.”
Trusting Nels’ taste, I bought it cold, figuring that with a name like Hindustani Slide Guitar, it had to be good. Upon hearing the first few ultra-mellow minutes of the opening Raga Saraswati, I experienced a brief feeling of buyers’ remorse. In a snap judgment I thought, this doesn’t rock, this sounds like the spacey Indian mood music they play at the Bodhi Tree (an irritatingly Hollywood New Age megastore that sells such indispensable accessories as the chakra pillow, “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” video, and of course, the Tao-Sex Decoder). I lit some Nag Champa incense, picked up a magazine, and decided to accept the album as pleasantly exotic background music.
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