Surinder Sandhu and his funky Karma Machine

One of the most exciting albums I've heard in years. I don't say that very often these days.

I'm ancient. So I've heard a lot of stuff. I've seen the same ideas come round and round and round. And really, there's nothing wrong with that – pop music is always rewriting itself using what's been done before. For many people, including kids making music for the first time, that's a rush for them, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Nothing wrong with grabbing old ideas and giving them fresh interpretation either. Once in a while, the results are exceptional.

Step forward Surinder Sandhu. Surinder takes his time. His projects can take years. This one took at least five, but then he is a busy man. When I chatted with him, he was just heading off for a rehearsal at a local theatre, before finishing off a project for the CBSO, and setting up stuff for the next Mr Khan project.

There's a new album at last: Karma Machine. I see it as a hugely significant development in Birmingham's world of music.


What fascinates me is how this is all developing. Asian music coming out of Brum is just - different. We should be very very proud of what's going on.  It calls for a bit of  support and recognition.

I've know of Surinder for a while. His Saurang Orchestra album, which emerged in 2003/4, was a hugely ambitious and expensive project involving location recording, the Royal Liverpool  Philharmonic Orchestra, and guitar giants like Steve Vai, along with Surinder's super-expressive work on Sarangi.

Sarangi? It's an Asian stringed instrument, with generally four bowed strings and maybe 30 sympathetic drone strings, but proportions vary. Think of an eastern Theorbo, if you like.

The Saurang Orchestra album sported a host of other luminaries too, but I'm not sure it's recouped even now. The economics of modern-day recording are fascinating and terrifying. But the bonus for you is that it remains a fascinating album mixing Asian traditional instrumentation with full-on western ideas. You should check it out.

East-West fusions? Not new

Of course, east-west fusions have been going on for decades now, from Jazz work (John Mayer, John Coltrane, John MacLaughlin...) and latterly multiple strands of pop and dance emerging now and again into the mainstream. George Harrison deserves recognition for the work he was doing in the mid-sixties with the Beatles, as early as the Revolver album.

Birmingham has rich veins of talent and creativity in this field, with Layla Tutt, Mendi Singh and the Duggal brothers whose cluster of projects takes in Swami and Apache Indian. I know I've missed a few - please correct me if you have the inclination.

Having listened to Surinder's stuff  for a long time, I sought him out for a Radio To Go blog piece a few years ago. At the time, he was planning something new and ambitious, mixing 70s funk with some of his own ideas, under the working title of Funkawallahs. It's finally seen the light of day, and I'm enchanted; I'm astonished and impressed. When I hooked up with him to talk about the project, we talked music and music cultures for hours.

Surinder: For me the album is a look back at my youth growing up in the UK, and listening to James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, Quincy Jones – later on, Prince... I could go on all day. 

RV: On Karma Machine you're using the Sarangi in a different way to how you did fourteen years ago on the Saurang Orchestra project...

Surinder: It's about serving the song. Playing the Sarangi in a soloist manner didn't serve the music on Karma Machine. I wanted to create something to do with texture, to do with the melody. If you look at Motown, or any of the bands that inspired Karma Machine, there's not a lot of solos in the music. 

So – a lotta lotta funk. Mixed with all kinds of other stuff. You have to listen to it to believe it. Karma Machine is loaded to the gunwales with some of Birmingham's finest, most able musos - Roger Innis, Glyn Phillips, Loz Rabone, Nige Mellor, to pick a few at random. I think they had a ball recording it.

Surinder: I've worked quite a lot with Loz (Rabone).  Loz  is a brilliant songwriter. And we're making music that's fun, that reconnects us with our childhood. That's what makes it so energising for us. The best way to create is to surround yourself with kind, calm, ego less talents. It was a blissful, creative process. 

And it works, by golly does it work. You can check it out on his website and keep your eyes peeled for free downloads in this digital marketing age.

Surinder Sandhu website
Karma Machine promo teaser

Listen to a two-part Surinder special with me on Brum Radio:
Part 1 goes out on Tuesday 9th May at 4pm.
Part 2 goes out on Tuesday 16th, same time.
Both will be also available on Listen-again.

Karma Machine is also the feature album this week on Brum Radio, with a track every two hours outside of live shows.

A conversation with Swami: Simon & Diamond and S-Endz

A brand new band that's been going since 1999

Two months back, I compiled a local YouTube chart. It's a labour of love, and I can miss things. Happily, I'm usually swiftly corrected. S-Endz duly pointed out that his band, Swami, had scored very decent views for their new video. So I fixed things, bouncing the bottom entry (sorry, lads) to present a revised 50. And started thinking about Swami. 

There's lots of Asian bands in the West Midlands. But normally they aim squarely at Asian markets; Swami are different. Malkit Singh may sell millions worldwide to Bhangra fans, but Swami aren't cut from that cloth, not remotely. For a start, they're cross-cultural, in the grand Birmingham tradition. The website is slick and impressive. 

A swift introduction by Sharnita Athwal at Shaanti, and I'm sitting with Simon and Diamond Duggal, joined later by S-Endz. Swami has been Simon and Diamond's project, since 1999.

The day Surinder Sandhu told Steve Vai to wind it down - and down - and down.

The Glorious Process: music cultures flowing to new places, in your town. Be proud.

Some eleven years ago, I was asked to write a review of a newly released album on a local record label. The label folded in the end; financially, it was pretty much a disaster. But the record – ah, the record...! I liked it a lot. I like it even more now. It stayed on my player for months, and I always return to it with pleasure. 

You can still find it in all the usual places. It's called Saurang Orchestra; it was written, arranged, orchestrated and produced by Midlands born and raised Surinder Sandhu. Sandhu now works all over the world, in as many genres as you can dream of. But this early album is, I think, one of the few successful east-west fusion albums. Alongside a huge battery of classical Indian instrumentation, Sandhu deployed saxophones, string bass, acoustic and electric guitars (from, among others, Steve Vai)... and the RLPO string section.

This year, I got to meet and talk with Surinder Sandhu; he was playing at Eastern Electronic Festival. I really wanted to talk to him about this album (but scroll down for details of his newest project) and the bridging of music worlds. 

Here you are, a huge global name, with a contacts book that goes on forever... and you're hardly know in your home town. I don't get it. 

"Somebody said to me, years ago, that you can't be a prophet in your own land! I'm from Wolverhampton, and I've always taken that as good advice. When I was working in Hollywood, working out there, coming back to Wolverhampton, nobody knew who I was. But I'd just been out doing some incredible stuff. It's never been important; the work is always the number one thing. 

"I used to know this guy – sort of still do - he'd walk around Wolverhampton with his guitar, putting his hand up. People knew who he was, but he'd never really played outside of Wolverhampton! I'd be walking alongside him. Nobody knew who I was. I took a lot of pleasure in that. It's a nice thing. He loved the attention, and I loved the work. 

"So the Birmingham thing... Birmingham's a great place. I love the music here, I love the musicians. It's such an underrated city. We've got some of the best musicians in the world, some of the best creatives around. What's interesting about Birmingham is that they are making it happen. Rather than wait for the windows of opportunity, they're making the opportunities. The musicians are doing this. They're going into the venues, setting up nights... I really like that. 

"But coming back to your original question – I don't know. That's how it is."

I guess you go where the work is.

"That's it." 

Can we talk about the Saurang Orchestra album?For me, it's an east-west fusion that actually works. Most of them don't, quite: either it's a western groove with the eastern guys noodling round the edges, or it's the other way around. But not here! How did you pull that sound out of the RLPO string section?

"They were very co-operative! The guys in Liverpool are incredible. The whole of that collaboration spring from me being invited up there to give a lecture on Indian music. We had about 25, 30 musicians turn up. I gave this talk, and I played some Sarangi for them. They loved it. It was the musicians who said 'Will you write something for us? And let's put a concert together!' 

"That, to me, means a lot, more than if it came from the management, so I instantly said OK. So we'd had this thing, and three years later when we came to record the album they were on it, they were happy. But it took a lot of trial and error. 

"You have to understand and respect both sides. Classical musicians can be a bit snobby, they don't think they need to be told."

Is this Western Classical you're talking about?

"No - across the board! Because you spend so much time practising and perfecting what you're doing, you can become a bit insular, a bit single minded with it. I lived in India for a bit, and spent a lot of time around classical musicians, great classical musicians... I'd play a bit of rock or some jazz to these guys. They'd listen to it and say 'Yeah...It's nothing special.. I could do that.' And they'd play something really fast. 

"And I'd try to explain, as a nineteen year-old boy, that that wasn't the same thing! Very impressive of course, but... it's that BB King thing, or a George Benson lick or a Ben Webster lick: playing three notes a certain way is so hard to do. So, so, hard to do. Playing those three notes with passion, with flavour, with feeling – that can take a lifetime of practise.

"But you have to respect it. If you don't respect it, you'll never get that sound. One the Saurang Orchestra album, I was recording Steve Vai - a track called 'Sunday Morning in Calcutta'. Steve hadn't played much acoustic on anything. Some semi-acoustic on Zappa recordings. 

"So I said 'look, I want you to play acoustic'. And he was like 'I'm ready So when we recorded the track. I'd flown in from Calcutta to Los Angeles. I had tapes of the Sarod player. Steve was there, started playing his acoustic, and it was very impressive stuff. 

"I kept stopping him. I must have stopped him about five plus times.

We are talking about Steve - guitar god – Vai, right?

"Yeah. And I kept stopping him and saying 'play less!' 

'OK'

And we'd start recording again... 

'Stop. Play even less' 

'OK' 

"But there's a reason why certain musicians are who they are, and it is because they have this brilliance, this genuine desire to create something special. He's one of those rare breeds, because there's never any ego. He wanted it to be special for me and for me to produce him. If you listen to the recording, I wanted the space between the notes – like we do in Indian music. He played so well on that! 

I'm curious about how you got started. How did you gravitate to the Sarangi?

"When you're in the 60s and 70s, growing up in the UK, the links we had back to India were temples, Bollywood movies, and family events. I don't watch Bollywood movies now, really, but in those days, we sat as a family, and watched on VHS. And I heard the Saurang; as soon as I heard it, I loved the sound. It wasn't until later that I discovered more. There's a fantastic organisation in Wolverhampton called Surdhwani, who do Indian classical music concerts. The people who ran it, Mr and Mrs Sarcar, I think, did it purely out of passion for Indian classical music.

"We had, in Wolverhampton, the best classical musicians in the world coming: Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussein, Amjad Ali Khan: all the best, the crème de la crème, came to Wolverhampton, because of these guys who loved Indian Classical music. I started going to concerts, I spent a lot of time in the library... taking out books, records, cassettes. That's how I ended up with the Sarangi, and finally moving to Delhi, to study with a master." 

But you're not the only one to do this. Mendi Singh swapped pop banghra for classical Tabla studies. And you like to collaborate, clearly, which is a very Birmingham / Wolverhampton thing.

"I think it's that British thing when, you're from a family of immigrants in a new country. There's two sides of culture, isn't there? There's a fantastic choreographer I work with called Shane Shambhu – he studied Bharatanatyam Indian dancing. He's from a South Asian background. We have similarities in the way we work. What's interesting is the creative parallels: we have this cultural heritage. But then there's the fantastic array of music that we're exposed to in the UK. With respect – because in India it's there, but it's kind of almost a novelty."

Is it filtered in some way?

"It is, even with the internet. But here, we really tend to get stuck in. I was born and raised on great pop music. I grew up on 70s pop music, which was probably the best we've ever had."

You always identify with the stuff you grew up on as a teenager. Can I ask you a question? We've seen things evolve in Birmingham and elsewhere, to the point where we have a fabulously diverse and very cool music scene. But I'm surprised to see so little progression into the mainstream from young Asian artists. Why do you think that is?

"You know, I always say it's about a diet. A dietary process of what you're listening to. If Asian audiences don't have good role models, then you're screwed. I used to have this conversation with the BBC Asian Network about the music they're playing, and why they need to play better stuff. Creative new Asian musicians are not being pushed."

Plus ca change... that radio blockage is no different in spirit from those at US radio in the 50s, and UK radio in the 60s. They played safe and obvious, and held back the new kids until they couldn't stop them. But now we live in an age where radio is not the only way to spread the word. 

And yet, and yet... That glorious process, where music seeps from one culture to another, sometimes over decades, is now happening. The town is bursting with home grown musicians, of undisputed brilliance and adventure. We've hardly scratched the surface. There are treasures to discover, everywhere you look. It's something to shout about, and it's one of the new aspects to this city and this region that gives me a lot of hope. 

Surinder Sandhi is part of that glorious process. And he has a new crossover project in the pipeline: Funkawallahs

"I'm just prepping the Funkawallahs album for mastering at Abbey Road over the next two weeks, after which there will be a month long series of clips appearing online sales. We plan to press a limited edition vinyl batch too  We're not announcing live dates yet but will do after September."

Links

Surinder's web pages, with more details of Funkawallahs.
An earlier interview with Surinder around thw Eastern Electronic Festival

See more music posts on Radio To Go

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Layla, Surinder and Sharnita: Shaanti is back all month long.

Eastern Electronic logo/artwork    

A few days ago, I heard a hugely enjoyable radio interview. The guest was old and seriously articulate, and he reeled out appealing chat and interesting folk-oriented music. I wanted to hear more - quite unusual for me with today's risk-averse radio. It turns out I'd heard Seth Lakeman's dad, telling stories and playing songs. Ah, that explains it. 

A gentle reminder of what radio can still do: make you sit up, smile, and enjoy something new and different. Sadly, that's not what we generally get. And that leads me to the musicians in today's post, part of Shaanti Eastern Electronic Festival, running in Birmingham this month. One is starting out, the other is hugely involved in projects around the world. Both are at the top of their game, and both are from the West Midlands. Boy, are they ever inspiring. Boy, do they ever deserve airplay.... and do they get it? 

I'll give you one guess.

Talking bout my generations: Khaliq

It's taken two or more generations, but British music is now flowing all ways between communities. 

Last month, tickets for the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary gigs sold out in record time; you can still get em for upwards of £400 on Seatwave. Hey, bargain! But just head over to Spotify and dig into those 50 year-old Stones’ R and B covers. Time is NOT on their side. 'Little Red Rooster'? Please - let me suggest Howling Wolf. 

Mick’n’Keef had a sincere go at Chicago blues back in the day, but looking back today, it all sounds a bit wonky and self-conscious. That wasn’t their fault – they certainly weren’t in control in the studio, and for all the good intentions, it was a big jump, geographically and culturally, from 60s Swinging London... to Chicago or Mississippi. 

But when those 60s English musos dabbled with stuff from way beyond their culture, they really did break new ground. Quite understandably, they didn’t hit the spot to start with. But only six years later, Zeppelin showed up with technique and showbiz chops that left Mick and co in the dust; the ball was rolling. After that, imperfectly, but slowly and surely, things opened up. Which - some time later - brings us to musicians like Khaliq.

Nowadays it’s not a one-way flow, the way it was two generations back. In fact, for the latest generation, some of whom I admire enormously, identity and ethnicity really doesn’t matter; it’s simply not relevant. And that’s a fine thing. Khaliq - the name comes from their lead singer and main writer - have just released an album, recorded at Magic Garden. Now, these boys are not spring chickens; they’ve got over thirty years’ listening shining out of their music. I wondered where Khaliq started off…. 

“When I was a kid? Led Zeppelin. My brother got me the Stairway to Heaven t-shirt. And he played me the album. I’d never heard anything like it. But I listened to everything. Sabbath… massively into Stevie Wonder… Van Morrison. Then, when I heard Bob Dylan, I didn’t listen to Zeppelin for about six months … Springsteen, Weller, Tom Petty. Genres didn’t matter. If it did something to me, that’s how I judged it. 

 “So when I started writing songs as a kid, I used to think the only songs I can ever put out have got to do the same thing to others as these songs have done to me. 

Khaliq - World Alone 

How can you judge your own songs? That’s the hardest thing in the world… 

“Not for me. I’ve got a comparison in my head. You know when you go into a studio, and you want to… reference it…to see if it’s got it going on? I’ve got that mad reference in my head. I wish I could get rid of it sometimes.

From listening to what I did, it set a certain standard, a certain level. And I can tell straight away if it’s ‘up’ there. And then we play, it and work it with the band, and see how people react… 
 How do the songs come? 

"Whole songs come. The verse, the second verse, the chorus, the last verse, the story from start to finish. It all rhymes, it all makes sense, and it comes out in five minutes. But some of them, I’ll get the first verse at 13, and the second when I’m 27. It just happens. 

Khaliq - Everybody's Talking 

That was then. Bring me up to now? 

"First band was ‘As We Are’ – heavily into U2. When I first started I started on an acoustic guitar. My brother helped a lot. He was going to gigs; no other Asian lads were going anywhere, but my brother was allowed to go because he had three A levels and eleven O levels. He was top of the school, so the community couldn’t say anything. The community couldn’t slag him off and say he was wasting time with his hair and that. He was like the impeccable Asian kid, but with hair out there, and singing Phil Lynott songs! 

Same old, same old… sounds a lot like my grandparents leaning on my dad to take a respectable career - they were German Jews. So how much pressure did you get from Mum and Dad?

“At first, people weren’t happy. I was supposed to be an accountant or a lawyer. My dad thought it was going to be a phase. After a bit they realised this was everything for me. But there were conflicts. Am I English or am I Asian? Do I go to the mosque, or do I chill out with my mates and have a quick beer? Am I even supposed to have a beer? All this mad stuff going on. But the guitar was the best thing – you can sit in your room on your own, and once you’ve hit the tune – not even a tune a couple of notes… that was it That feeling, it made me like I’ve just done something. And then the words started coming out. 

Khaliq - England 

What about the album, gigs to promote, all that?

“We’re releasing the album (Astral Projections) on iTunes and all the other online places. But we’re doing a big local release, and a big campaign in March. We’re supporting Reverend and the Makers, maybe a support slot with Simon and Oscar from Ocean Colour Scene; I’m writing with Steve Craddock for an acoustic album. He called me a week ago, before flying out to tour with Paul Weller. I’m a massive fan… and he took the album with him to give to Weller. And we’re doing a living-room tour. … 

Khaliq - and the guys in the band are great. Nice guys with passion and interesting perspectives to explore. We could have talked for hours. But as I touched on at the start, what is striking about Khaliq’s situation was how, in two generations, the flow of ideas, and our ability to knowledgeably and respectfully embrace new musics across multiple cultures, and in many cases interpret and re-interpret it with skill and passion, has so completely changed. 

A while back, I did a documentary - Handsworth Evolution - on the post-war generations of Caribbean musicians who came to the UK and saw their music flow into the creative pool. 

There’s another gig coming up soon that highlights this very clearly, when two fine sets of musicians, already featured on this blog – The Beat and Xova, second and third generations respectively - play Birmingham Town Hall on December 15th. Hey, a lot cheaper that the Stones, and it's my guess there'll be a lot more heart to the gig as well. 

It was relatively easy to trace the musical generations for my Handsworth documentary, and slightly harder to try to pinpoint the musical and creative flows out from and back into Asian musicians. I'm pretty sure that this will become clearer in time. 

Khaliq's Soundcloud page