Slowspin Combines Ambient-Jazz & Hindustani Folk On New Album 'AFTERIMAGE'

'Afteimage', the latest album by Zeekar Ahmed aka SLOWSPIN, isn't the first time the U.S.-based Karachi-rooted artist has expressed the inner worlds of the diaspora. Her archival sound installation 'Mother, I Am Compelled to Leave' has done that before. Neither is it the first time she has combined folk influences with contemporary instrumentation. That's been done with similar themes on her previous critically lauded album 'TALISMAN'.

However, the new 10-track record sees her grip the universality in both aspects tighter and shed off the excess further with a minimalist approach. The blunt, heavy hits of drums with brushes or mallets, clean guitar strums, and sometimes harps and woodwinds too, put the work in the textural jazz palette along with its slightly improvisational nature. The simple melodies on tracks like lullaby-like 'Jaat Rahi' or the sustained longings of 'Hari Hari' add a safe consonance to the album, while a track like 'Mausam / Broken Hearted One' layers its melodies till its shapes obscure into a bed. All of these instances give 'TALISMAN' an ambient effect but with a dynamic character, creating a standout lexicon for the album that is truly its crown jewel.

Meanwhile, the influence of the folk canon, no doubt informed by Ahmed's academic and curatorial work on South Asian female folk musical traditions, opens up the themes of the album from just the diaspora experience to anyone who has had to move away from loved ones, said emotional goodbyes, felt the need for them and longed for the life before them at the same time.

The English-language songwriting on the album does add variation to the album, but they don't share the perfect marriage with the placating soft instrumentation and the focused sentimentality of the patient melodic expression on a single word that the Braj, Hindustani and Urdu counterparts feature. It's the latter world where 'AFTERIMAGE' functions best, creating a sonic world where it can take flight into shoegazy crescendos like on 'Mother I Have To Leave' or stay convinced in a memorable, delicate performance as in 'Jaat Rahi'.

Listen to 'Afterimage' below and follow Slowspin for more information.

Image: Slowspin & executive producer, bassist and synth player Shahzad Ismaily by Tonje Thileson