One Morning in Gurgaon

When the South African guitarist Guy Buttery embarked on a tour of India in 2019 as part of a trio with the classical sarangi player Mudassir Khan and tabla player Mohd Amjad Khan, the three musicians had never met or played together before. Their first concert in New Delhi was performed ‘totally blind’ as Buttery puts it, but the intoxicating, spontaneous empathy that unfolded on stage was so rewarding that the following day he set about finding somewhere for them to record. He secured a morning’s studio time and the results are captured on this astonishing and entirely improvised album.

Before they played ‘Raag Yaman’, Mudassir explained a skeleton idea of the raga in spoken word. The tape was turned on and ten minutes of telepathic musical magic followed, Buttery’s guitar wizardry holding a thrilling and uninhibited conversation with the soaring sound of the sarangi, underpinned by Amjad’s urgent, propulsive tabla rhythms. ‘Raag Kirwani’ is in more reflective mood but just as impressive, while on the hypnotic ‘I Know This Place’ Buttery exchanges his guitar for the mbira (thumb piano), which interlocks seamlessly with Amjad’s tabla as Mudassir plays a haunting melody over their seamless rhythmic patterns.