Ronobir
Hypnosis – Deep House Sitar (Valley Entertainment, 2015)
Every once in a while it’s necessary to slip mindlessly into music, to not have to contend with abrupt shifts in mood or tone, to not have to decipher meaning, but to simply take a ride down the rabbit hole, safe in the knowledge that music will take you where you need to go. If you are looking for such a CD let me recommend Ronobir’s Hypnosis: Deep House Sitar out on the Valley Entertainment label.
Having played sitar on recordings for Ziggy Marley and Katy Perry, performed with the Blue Man Group, served as the musical director for the Apollo Theater’s celebration for the Godfather of Soul “James Brown: Get on the Good Foot” and released the 2010 recording Joy for Silver Lake under Ronobir Lahiri, Ronobir lays out sitar-centered dance, trance, electronica concoction perfect for that mindful escape on Deep House Sitar.
Carving the music into four themed sections entitled Til the Morning Comes, Darkness, Beautiful People and Black Moon, Ronobir lures listeners into that ride into the rabbit hole by way of Indian inspired sitar, electronic and dance beats. With a decidedly cinematic flow, Deep House Sitar offers subtle, nuanced shifts in mood from the light of Til the Morning Comes with delicately woven vocals to a darker, deeper flow in Darkness to lush jazzier feel in Beautiful People and finally to an “other space” feel on Black Moon tracks. Listeners also get a couple of quirky treats with the additions of sitar/dance versions of Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” and Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.”
Voluptuous and luxuriant, Ronobir lavishes the listener with dishy sitar lines, carefully worked in electronica and infectious rhythms that aren’t going to pound the listener or his neighbors into the ground. The travel on Deep House Sitar is easy, not simple or simplistic, but gratifying. Indeed, the mood seems to be all about the flow from one track to the next and the evolution of the musical space to the next theme. Personally, I could have done without “Pumped Up Kicks” and “Somebody That I Used to Know” because they just seemed like added on novelty tracks.
The ride might not be wild, but Ronobir’s Hypnosis: Deep House Sitar is indeed a welcomed escape into the wonderland of sitar/dance music.
Buy Hypnosis – Deep House Sitar
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
