MD Pallavi & Andi Otto - Songs for Broken Ships (2023)
Stellar folk-pop-electro fusion bringing the stories of Bangalore to the sounds of Hamburg... Andi Otto brings to the table 7/4 and 5/4 beats as well as ”dubbed out basslines” and some charming synthesized sounds, while classically trained singer MD Pallavi performers poems in her native tongue, Kannada. The kind of traditional singing she does employs ”solkattu”, syllablic patterns to mimic instrumentation - if you will, a particular kind of scatting, which I find truly fascinating! The music stylistically oscillates between quasi-ambient and faux disco, but it is consistently great and surprising, if you can use the word ”surprise” - I mean, just by looking at that cover with hipster typefaces I knew I was going to get a good time... And it surely delivered. One of the albums I wish I knew about last year!