saagara-3 (the shackleton versions) lp

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British producer Shackleton has transformed Saagara's highly acclaimed 2024 album 3 into a haunting, dub-infused counterpart. What began as a remix request evolved into a full-leng th reinterpretation, where Saagara's intricate blend of South Indian percussion, jazz, and electronic elements enters a dark, atmospheric dialogue with Shackleton's shapeshifting soundscapes. The result is a captivating rework that stands beautifully alongside the original, subtly amplifying its drama while adding new layers of depth and mystery. 3 made itself right at home in the tak:til universe as soon as it was released to considerable acclaim, quickly becoming as much of a touchstone for the label's Fourth World aesthetic as Jon Hassell, 75 Dollar Bill, and Sirom. A mind-twisting conference of jazz clarinet and sax, Carnatic percussion from South India and the kind of minutely textured electronic music that doesn't mind if you sit down (but would definitely prefer you to dance), the band's first album for seven years was well worth waiting for. What had Wacław Zimpel been up to in the meantime? Those seven years appear to have been extremely well-spent. What's been picked up on the way? For one, the conviction that the studio is as much of an instrument as the clarinet, the sax and indeed the percussion and violin that Saagara's elite line-up of Giridhar Udupa, Aggu Baba, K Raja and Mysore N. Karthik have spent their whole lives mastering. And it's to the studio that 3 has been led once again, in the form of this brilliant set by a British experimental electronicist celebrated for his groundbreaking dubstep productions and, latterly, for his more ambient and minimalist work and a series of high-profile collaborations (Pinch, Six Organs of Admittance, Holy Tongue and, indeed, Wacław Zimpel). At every point as beautifully coiled and weighted as 3, it matches the original for drama, trades blows with it, squints at it, smiles at it, waves at it and just as often picks its pocket. There's a little more darkness in these versions, Lancashire rain rather more than the heat and dust of Southern India, perhaps; but it's recognizably an exchange of love and respect that will get owners of both records scuttling backwards and forwards between the two. Wacław's lovely description of 3 as "interstellar folk" places that record firmly within one of music's more fascinating recent currents: the meeting of electronics and global roots, often anchored by drone, a fascination with minimalism and the kind of progressive retrofuturism that always seems to emerge at times of crisis. Show more