3 Cities - Bombay Dub Orchestra
".... an ambitious undertaking that has yielded an entrancing follow-up to their brilliant 2006 self-titled debut. .... an extremely unique sort of chill that's equally beholden to Indian traditional forms, South Asian underground and a Western symphonic sensibility. "
Billboard - Philip Van Vleck"It does not favor the “light” over the “heavy.” There’s beauty in the unpolished lotus that is directly pulled from the mud. The hard and rugged beats of “Monsoon Malabar,” the downward trek of “Spiral,” the sweeping orchestra of “Junoon;” it’s all there, canvassing the field of good and evil and finding a middle ground. "
Lime - Derek Beres"Bombay Dub Orchestra's sophomore album is a masterful synthesis of Western orchestration and Eastern exoticism. "
CMJ - Christine Broomhead - - - - - -
Another day, another moment in time and yes.....another
Bombay Dub Orchestra - actually it didn't take us as long as the first one so that's an improvement already.
We are both very happy with our efforts and the 75 musicians and technicians that have been part of the journey of creating
3 Cities!
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We have had the pleasure of recording string orchestra and soloists in Chennai at
AR Rahman’s studio as well as in Mumbai (Bombay) with many of the same great musicians who played on the first album.
We also recorded at the legendary
Rockfield Studios in Wales laying down live drums, percussion, piano and Rhodes.
The majority of the recording took place at
Yash Raj studios in Mumbai as well as
Empire Studios where our first album was recorded.
We worked with some of the same string players - in fact most of the same guys played as well as
Sunil Das and
Dilshad Khan on Sitar and sarangi respectively and vocalist
Rakesh Pandit. We also recorded with master bansuri player
Ashwin Srinavasan who played with us live in London at the BBC's inaugural Electric Proms in 2006.
We also met some great musicians for the first time including santoor maestro
Ulhas Bapat and singer
Hamsika Iyer. We also worked with a great young local percussionist
Nishadh Chandra and also
Tapas Roy who played a host of instruments on the album including Santoor, Oud, Rebab, Saj, Dotala, and mandola. Also featured on vocals is Indian singer
Pradeep Pandit and his brother
Rakesh who sang on “Feel” from our first album.
Back in the UK we recorded with some of our regular players including the UK’s leading exponent of the tabla -
Sirishkumar, Abdullah Mufa on percussion and brushed kit,
Will Brown on drums,
Jonathan Mayer on sitar,
David Rainger on guitar and general guitar weirdness as well as male vocalist
Kartik and also vocalist
Meneka who featured on ‘Compassion’ on our first album. One of our new tracks ‘Amina’ also features
Adam Lamprell on Russian Zither. Adam remixed 'Compassion' from our first album for National Geographic!
Our Mumbai engineer was
Shantanu Huldikar who also was part of the engineering team on the first album. Our orchestra leader and assistant conductor, who we have worked with for ten years now on all of our Indian projects was
Neville Franco - one of Mumbai’s finest!
The album has been mastered by legendary Mastering engineer
Bob Katz!
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Please rush out and grab a copy or take a gentle stroll to your local record store! If you can't get out I guess downloading from iTunes or
Amazon or any other right minded online download store.
We'd love to hear what you think about it. We have been getting some good reviews which we have boldly put at the top of this entry!
The album officially comes out in the US and Canada on 21st October on Six Degrees Records. It will then be released in Jan 09 in the rest of the world - UK, India, Japan, Germany etc, etc. However it seems that it is available on
Amazon and other websites to purchase around the globe as an import. So that's cool.
Don't forget if you love it tell us. If you hate it....tell us... but be gentle!
Love n peace and thanks for being part of this crazy journey!
Andrew & Garry (& elephant)info@bombaydub.com