Sarathy Korwar - KALAK [Green LP+DL]

The Leaf Label

£21.58

Format: Green LP+DL
Catalogue No.: BAY125VX
Barcode: 843190012534
Release Date: 11 Nov 2022
Genre: Electronic/Jazz/World

Sarathy Korwar returns with new album KALAK. The follow up to the politically charged, award-winning More Arriving is an Indo-futurist manifesto - in rhythmic step with the past and the present, it sets out to describe a route forward. It celebrates a rich South Asian culture of music and literature, which resonates with spirituality and community, while envisaging a better future from those building blocks.
More Arriving - a candid reflection of Korwar’s experience of being an Indian in a divided Britain - won Best Independent Album at the 2020 AIM Awards, beating out the likes of Nick Cave and Kim Gordon.
It was also awarded MOJO’s Jazz Album of the Year and was shortlisted for Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards, the Jazz FM Awards and the Songlines Awards.

- The album will be released on CD, black vinyl and limited edition INDIES ONLY dark green vinyl (1,000 copies for the world).
- Each format features a different cover image with photography by Fabrice Bourgelle.
- All formats include an 8-page booklet, created by Sijya Gupta, with Korwar’s notes on the concepts behind the project.
- Recorded at Real World Studios, with The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue on synths, Tamar Osborn on baritone sax, Al MacSween on keys and percussionist Magnus Mehta.
- The album also features vocals by Kushal Gaya of Melt Yourself Down and Mumbai-based producer and electronic artist Noni-Mouse, as well as a track recorded with Japanese drum ensemble Kodo.
- Producer Photay remixed a track on Korwar’s debut album, Day To Day, and has also worked with Yazmin Lacey, Madison McFerrin, Steve Spacek and Jordan Rakei.
- First single ‘Utopia Is A Colonial Project’ is accompanied by a nocturnal, neon-lit dance video by Elliott Gonzo (Perfidious Productions), starring award winning choregrapher/dancer Botis Seva.
- Korwar’s debut Day To Day (Ninja Tune, 2016), combined the folk rhythms of India’s Sidi community with contemporary electronics and jazz textures, earning praise from the likes of Four Tet, Gilles Peterson and Floating Points.
- In 2018, he followed up with the live UPAJ Collective album, My East Is Your West (Gearbox), a critically-acclaimed take on the cultural appropriation of ‘spiritual’ Indo-jazz.
- Korwar has established himself as one of the most original and compelling voices in the UK jazz scene, collaborating with the likes of Shabaka Hutchings, Arun Ghosh, Hieroglyphic Being, Auntie Flo and Bex Burch (as Flock).
He has toured with Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal and Moses Boyd and was invited to perform at the prestigious New York Winter Jazz Festival in 2020.

1. A1. A Recipe To Cure Historical Amnesia
2. A2. To Remember (feat. Kushal Gaya)
3. A3. Utopia Is A Colonial Project
4. A4. Back In The Day, Things Were Not Always Simpler (feat. Noni-Mouse)
5. A5. The Past Is Not Only Behind Us, But Ahead Of Us
6. B1. Kal Means Yesterday And Tomorrow
7. B2. Remember Begum Rokheya
8. B3. That Clocks Don’t Tell But Make Time (feat. Kodo)
9. B4. Remember Circles Are Better Than Lines
10. B5. Remember To Look Out For The Signs
11. B6. KALAK - A Means To An Unend

Arranged, produced and mixed by Photay
On Sarathy Korwar:
“Rare talent… his rhythmically intense, entrancing vision adds a whole new spin to the Indo-jazz continuum”5/5 Mojo
“Absolutely of the moment: a psychedelic, electronic, jazzy odyssey that deals with issues of racial identity. It’s fabulous” 4/5 The Guardian
“A vibrant cacophony of Indian classical music, jazz and hip-hop that takes aim at cultural stereotypes and negative attitudes to immigration” The New York Times
“A remarkable meeting of jazz, hip-hop, Indian classical music and radical politics”the Quietus
“A timely soundtrack to these divisive times”Songlines
“Korwar takes in the political and radical history of jazz as a voice of the disenfranchised, and applies it to the Indian diaspora experience in contemporary Britain” The Vinyl Factory
“One of the best things we’ve been able to play on the radio for a very long time” Gilles Peterson, BBC 6 Music
Read interviews with Korwar in The Guardian, The New York Times, Songlines, Clash and Mixmag.