Mah-Ze-Tar will drop his self-titled LP October 19. Containing nine tracks, each track focuses on a specific Indian Raga, sung in Farsi, Hindi, and English, with surface colors from the Indian Dhrupad tradition.
Mah-Ze-Tar reflects a musical/spiritual journey rather than being simply a series of songs. The album floats through ambient textures to full-blown rhythmic trance movements. Mah-Ze-Tar’s unique style of expression balances on world instruments producing a lush soundscape of dazzling textures and stylistic resonance.
The amalgamation of traditional instruments, Sitar, Oud, Turkish Saz, Dilruba, and Bansuri, along with Persian, Indian, Flamenco, and Native American constituents, provides tantalizing, elusive nuances of colors and flavors.
Three years in the making, Mah-Ze-Tar’s vision for the album is to fuse the mystical sounds of the East with contemporary electronic reverberations, thus allowing a vast array of listeners to enjoy and appreciate the graceful complexity of time-honored compositions.
Outstanding tracks on the album include not only the lead single “Liquid Lotus,” but “Yaman,” which rides on transcendent tones exuding numinous magical hues. “Yaman” is one of the basic ragas in the Hindustani catalog. Another delightful tune is “Bhoopali,” running on five notes both ascending and then descending. Mah-Ze-Tar takes the five notes and aligns them in a variety of permutations, akin to leitmotifs. It’s gorgeous in its fluency and flow.
“Liquid Lotus” utilizes the Sitar to produce dreamlike hues, while Mah-Ze-Tar chants in mellow yet rich tones, conveying his hearers into celestial realms. The spiritual colors merge tastily with the gentle throb of contemporary dance momentum, imbuing the tune with soft textures of EDM.
If you listen closely, you can discern nuances of modern new wave flavors emanating from the music. The inflection of Mah-Ze-Tar’s voice mirrors present-day pop tangs as well as sublime aromas. Hints and pressures of classical music give the music alluring elegance.
Mah-Ze-Tar is marvelously provocative, full of devout sonic timbres and proximate progressive coloration.
Mah-Ze-Tar Social Links: Website | Facebook | YouTube Channel
