Track Listing

1. Traveller
2. Butterfly
3. Sutrix
4. Mombasstic
5. Decca
6. Eclipse
7. OK
8. Light
9. Disser/Point.Mento.B
10. Soni
11. Vikram The Vampire

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35860 in Music
• Released on: 1998-10-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 61 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
OK is one phrase that's universally known and understood, and on OK Talvin Singh tries for a similar global connection. A classically trained tabla player, he's performed with Björk and Massive Attack, holds his own club nights in London, and is the leading light of the burgeoning Asian Underground movement--in other words, a man of many parts. He brings them all together here--the Bollywood strings, the kannakol patterns of Indian music, and the skittering rhythms of drum & bass and jungle--to create something that is new and thoroughly vibrant. This is Britain at the millennium, drawing on its immigrants, full of Eastern promise, and ready to dive headlong into the future. An album of both intelligence and passion, it is more than OK; it's a complete marvel. --Chris Nickson

CD Description
Fusions of Indian music and Western dance have generally been lumped under the catch-all term "Bhangra" (actually a specific style of popular dance music traditionally associated with wedding parties in Pakistan and Northern India). However, tabla player Talvin Singh's solo debut OK shares a much stronger affinity with the musical structure of a classical Indian raga. Singh doesn't simply add Western club beats behind previously existing Indian music through sampling or remixing. Rather, he exploits the inherent tendencies of "intelligent" drum-and-bass and classical Indian music (ethereal chords and complex time signatures respectively) to find a natural point of intersection between the two, thereby developing an entirely new style.
Much more than any contemporaneous examples of "world-dance", this style recalls the fusiontablaist Badal Roy explored on records like Miles Davis' ONTHE CORNER. OK echoes those notorious sessions of Miles' fusion era not only in its moments of brilliance and spirit ofunedited improvisation, but also in the occasional self-indulgent mess. But while much of the material here cries out for editing, it also retains Miles' capacity to open countless new doors for the genres of music it touches.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful, infectious, warming and subtle album.
Talvin Singh manages to combine the exciting complexity of jungle and dance rhythms with the elegancy of Indian/Asian inspired music. It takes the listener on a journey, through mountains and streams to volcanoes and lightning. He seems to have every human feeling encapsulated on this unique and stunning album. I could gush for hours. The man is a genius. The album is invinsible.

A mixture of mystical asian ambience with a modern feel
When listening to Talvin Singh's album for the first time, naturally the first track that I flicked to was OK (the title track) which is absolutely mind-blowing, if only the other tracks were up to this high standard. OK is the sort of album where it's hard work to get into it, and once you are - you really have to be in the right mood to appreciate it. When in the right mood, it hits the spot perfectly! OK in my eyes is just that. OK.

Tim W.

What more can I add?
Having read some of the reviews here, I am not sure if I will be able to sway prospective buyers one way or the other. I get the feeling that OK is an album that you are going to be very impressed with or find it "okay". However, what I can say about the album is that Talvin Singh is a great producer and collabortor (I am quite a fan of the Madras Philiharmonic Orchestra). Like many others, I too like the up beat Sutrix, I like the slightly more downtempo sound of Butterfly (as heard on so many Cafe Del Mar and Ministry of Sound-esque chill-out CD's). I have been a fan of world fusion for quite a while, and I think OK has done a pretty good job of getting world fusion a wider audience.

What I would like to add is if you are one of the people who like Talvin Singh, then try checking out Karsh Kale, he is from the USA and I am sure you'd like his style too.