Track Listing

1. Broken Skin
2. Letting Go
3. Homelands
4. Pilgrim
5. Tides
6. Nadia
7. Immigrant
8. Serpents
9. Anthem Without Nation
10. Nostalgia
11. Conference
12. Beyond Skin

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6245 in Music
• Released on: 2001-06-11
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
A compulsive and unclassifiable mixture of Indian classical music, flamenco, killer acoustic drum & bass, hip-hop, jazz and soul, Beyond Skin is one of those albums that vibes in its own excellent orbit. A profoundly humanist album, Beyond Skin should further enhance Nitin Sawhney's reputation as one of Britain's most exciting and imaginative musicians. It may be based on concepts, a challenge to ideas of identity and nationality, but it's also a fluid, meditative atomic jam with Instrumental, Marque Gilmore, Jayanta Bose, Steve Sheehan and the nephews of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan amongst others. Sawhney creates some incredibly moving pieces at a slow, elegiac tempo--"Homelands" is a deep bliss-out tune where the astonishing playing of the string quartet, Instrumental combines in ethereal beauty with chanting tablas and the call and response vocals of Bose. On "Broken Skin" and "Immigrant", Sawhney scales new heights: political songs with exhilarating melodies and sing-along soul hooks. Yes--this is edge music full of rare invention, where atmosphere and austerity coalesce. A music vividly constructed around textures and rhythms, glimpses--echoes completely in tune with the tenor of our times. Beyond Skin is a fantastic album, an album so beautiful that it plays every emotion like a SP1200. This is a brit-pop album in the mould of ADF, Drum FM, Massive Attack and Primal Scream. --Maxine Kabuubi

Customer Reviews

Beyond Great
I've never reviewed an album on Amazon before, but I have to just stop by and echo the comments of almost everyone else here.... A superb album, where melodic piano notes intertwine beautifully with Indian tabla and Spanish guitar, underpinned by a drum- and- bassy line.

Yes Sawhney does put across a strong political message throughout the album, but I feel the soundbites really add something to an already excellent piece of work.

Tracks 1,2,5,& 7 are particular favourites of mine.

Simply superb music but...
This album is worth buying for the music alone. Indeed, the music is great but the pseudo-poetic album notes, whilst trying to convey an apparently good, albeit confused message, were so utterly pretentious that they detracted from my overall enjoyment of what is otherwise a great album- great in flaunting a flamboyant array of styles and sounds whilst retaining an obvious identity.

Politically engaged ambient tunes
As the title suggests, this album has a racial theme running through it, as does alot of Sawhney's stuff. He blends Spanish guitar sounds with Indian tabla percussion, some hip-hop, and best of all, wonderful melodic piano playing. If you are a fan of the latter, I suggest that you check out the track "Tides", you will not be disappointed.
Who would have guessed that such smooth music could be combined so effectively with a powerful political message? It's anyone's guess why this album is so rarely heard and underpublicised?