Om Suite Ohm

The latest instalment of Harry Manx’s strange journey – his ninth solo album – is an engaging affair that will delight his numerous fans and win him plenty of new ones. For the uninitiated, Harry Manx’s speciality is his self-coined ‘Mysticssippi blues,’ bringing together the blues and Indian raga. He has a lived-in voice and the likes of Taj Mahal, Ben Harper and Brice Springsteen are fans. Having been a blues guitarist, Manx studied with the esteemed veena player Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and the result is a bit like if Ry Cooder had relocated to Mumbai.

Manx’s gritty voice brings everything down to earth, and any woolly New Ageisms are counteracted by both his singing and his epic, panoramic slide-guitar playing. This album features an Aboriginal rapper on ‘Way Out Back’ while two of the strongest tracks, the opener ‘Further Shore’ and ‘Saya,’ are African-inspired grooves. Without doubting his sincerity, the romantic ballad ‘The Moon Rose Up’ sounds a little overworked by comparison.

He’s a self-assured performer who surrounds himself with crack musicians; he’s confident enough to take on John Coltrane’s all-time jazz classic ‘A Love Supreme’ and almost pull it off. Even if the album’s title, Om Suite Ohm, is slightly creaky, Manx remains one of the most accomplished of the battalion of fusion musicians and has carved out a distinctive, appealing sound.