Longsight Calling

I'm late getting this review out but I figured it was well worth as it was such a great gig. Matt Halsall has mentioned a few times to me about Arun Ghosh who has been playing regularly at the Royal Exchange Theatre. I still haven't made it to one of those but I did finally get down to the 'Northern Namaste' album launch gig at the Contact Theatre on the 17th of May. Damn glad I did as well as it was a really phenomenal gig. The band for this one was Arun's Indo-Jazz Sextet. Though I'm no expert, indo-jazz describes the overall sound well but there's a fair mix of different styles in there, much of it in a classic hypnotic modal vein. I particularly liked the track 'Uterine' reminiscent of a great Pharoah Sanders slow modal vamp. Another fave of mine was the CD opener 'Aurora' which is quite a tasty uplifting track that sets the mood and tone for the CD well. You can hear a number of the tracks on Arun's MySpace.

Arun is also visually captivating, swaying back and forth with one foot in front of the other propelling the notes forward with extra momentum. He frequently wanders off mic and out of the light adding a distant backdrop to the soloists. There was some great playing all round from the other players with Led Bib Bass player Liran Donin and keyboard player Kishon Khan standing out. I picked up a copy of the CD afterwards and I can highly recommend it. Buy one now.