"Rishte features a colaboration between the wonderful Ghazal singer Najma Aktar and "The thinking man's guitar hero" (New York Times) that blends South Asian folk and classical traditions with the blues."

New Album Rishte Out Now

"Outstanding ****" - Mojo

UK Tour
Spring 2010

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Biography

When Najma met Gary there was no plan. Najma knew and respected Gary’s work with Jeff Buckley (he coauthored Grace) and Gary had loved Najma’s ethereal vocal collaboration with Page and Plant. A couple of gigs later Gary produced the music (including some songs originally written for Buckley) and Najma nailed the words and the melodies for their first album, Rishte. And in the process a beautiful and curious transformation has occurred.

There is blues in the mix - in particular the eerie revival of the Skip James classic Special Rider Blues (Gary’s also a Captain Beefheart alumnus) and there’s Indian music too, as expected (both Daaya and Parda are based on Ghazal styles). But out of this chrysalis of expectation has burst a butterfly whose wings drip psychedelic jewels. A dark and heady funk and fey folk evocations jostle in the powerful title track and a powerful pop sensibility underpins everything.

It would be easy to apply simplistic marketing jargon to the music of Rishte: Indo-Blues fusion, east-meets-west and the like. But this is to misunderstand the alchemy that occurred when Gary met Najma - a rare confluence of interests, talents and cosmic synchronicities that have produced an album which is truly more than the sum of its parts: a unique and pungent fusion.