Salt Rain

Description

Product Description Music for Crocodiles; is Sheela Raman's 3rd album. Her first, Salt Rain, was sensationally nominated for the finals of the Mercury Music Prize and has gone on to become a massive hit in France where TV advertisers have fallen in love with the sensuous grooves. He follows up, love Trap came out in 2003. Since her debut in 2001 she has been growing and learning as both a singer/songwriter but also as a performer. She recently played to a sold-out Shepherds Bush Empire (supporting extravagant French star, M) with just the guitar of Sam Mills, her producer, writing partner and now husband. She was rapturously received and showed just what an amazing, confident and sexy performer that she is. Er mixture of Indian Caryatid tradition with jazz, African and European influences IS totally unique and has tremendous appeal across the board. She is guaranteed to find support within the press and at radio and she will be playing live throughout the year. Although this is not a review, we have this from influential Times journalist Nigel Williamson on hearing this album: emm/narada 2005. .com If the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" is one of the classic examples of raga rock (emphasis on rock), fusing the ancient Indian modal pattern of raga with western rock & roll, Susheela Raman's entire output on her remarkable debut Salt Rain can well be called raga blues, (emphasis on raga). Trained to sing classical Indian music from childhood, the Londoner by birth began experimenting with the vocal style of American blues in adolescence, finding in her early 20s a richly exotic multitextured sound. African rhythms, Asian-chordal dissonance, and a deep womanly voice make for an intoxicating listening experience. Add to this a band of players with origins from Romania to Greece, Spain, Kenya, and beyond. Rather than run together as an ineffective mishmash of multicultural styles, Raman and crew offer up a stunning circus of sound like a masala-Gypsy-klezmer band with one foot in the Delta. Familiar as the soaring voice of Joi, Raman is an intensely exciting new voice not in just world music, but in music as a whole. Salt Rain is both bountiful and devastatingly beautiful. --Paige La Grone