Big Fish Audio | Future Music US David Roman | Mahadhi - African Rhythms Product Review
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Mahadhi - African Rhythms | Future Music US

Reviewer: David Roman Back to Mahadhi - African Rhythms product details

Scanning the globe for musical ideas has been the catalyst for many a musical pioneer, from Rolling Stone Brian Jones' forays into Moroccan music to George Harrison's championing of Ravi Shankar and other Indian virtuosos to Bill Laswell's brilliant cross-pollinations with tabla ace Zakir Hussein and Middle Eastern violinist Simon Shaheen. Fortunately, these days you don't have to fly to a third world country to add authentic global elements to your music.

Big Fish may be best known for hip-hop, jazz breaks and club grooves, but they've paid special attention to the World Music scene as well. Their new elments: Indian is a broad collection of instrumental loops and performances from the Karnatic tradition, including, on the melodic side, flutes do tara, sitar, santoor, violin and male and female vocals. A nod ti Indian musical form, many of the loops are arranged in terms of the alap- the meterless introductory exposition of a peice- and both major and minor figures, as well as specific ragas, melodic motives that correspond to particular times of day and moods. Percussion loops - presented in both WAV and REX file formats - include tablas, ghatam, Idakka, mridangam and more; melodic instrument loops are in WAV only.

Mahadhi is similarly packed with high-fidelity 16-bit WAV, REX and Apple Loops, focusing on African percussion instruments like the conga, bembe, big ekwe and the shekere. Arranges in folders by tempo - from 90 bpm to 170 - Mahadhi features more kalimba, agogo and sakara than you'll probably ever need. Whether you choose to keep the samples in their dry, uneffected state or trick them out with reverb, distortion or who-knows-what other processes, you'll have an ample library of African percussion that could serve as the basis for constructing literal recreations of African idioms or simply flavoring your own tracks with something a bit more exotic.

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