Fareed Haque Group, "Cosmic Hug", Magnatude Records Those familiar with Fareed Haque's recordings for Blue Note in the 1990s might grapple with the conundrum of how this exceptional jazz player could become bewitched by a genre which has never before been heard by human ears. Fareed himself refers to the music on "Cosmic Hug" as "South Asian gospel music," but the label of "Techno-tantric Groove" seems more precise. Fareed is an innovator who often shocks and challenges his listeners with his gift to hybridize musical cultures and flirt with the fringes, but his past projects have been an amalgamation of relatively staid classical forms with jazz. Here, he fuses a cerebral variety of techno-jazz as pioneered by guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel with polyrhythmic world music of Indian influence. Some of this music does ring familiar, as on "fh/sk", where Fareed's fretless Godin conjures an ethereal ambiance that would slide in well between tracks of Pat Metheny's "Imaginary Day". But on the title track "Cosmic Hug" Fareed's sitar-guitar dances to-and-fro over what might be straight-up jazz were the bass, drums and keyboards to be isolated out, pulling the music to a fantastic netherworld where only Fareed knows the path. Kalyan Pathak on tabla and voice is a valuable collaborator on this recording, the one who is most responsible for the success of the Fareed Haque Group's forays into "world" territory ("Gulab Jammin", "fh/sk", "Raj" and "Lahara"). © Alan Fark

 

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