Wednesday January 11 2023

I’ve been crabby as hell but the following sequence of music has lifted me towards agreeableness. Mohi Bahauddin Dagar’s Ahir Bhairav is his version of a Hindustani morning raga, lasting almost an hour here. He plays a rudra veena, a variety of “tube zither” that connects a fretted body (dandi) to two large gourds (tumbas). Dagar lets the microtonal action of the drone string take precedence for the first half. After that, plucked bass notes and melody drift in slowly. It sounds like a brain, a base that wells with energy and is joined by a few fireflies of thought.

Not a bad idea to go straight from there into Space & Awareness by Inhmost (a.k.a. Simon Huxtable), a recent ambient album in the ‘90s sense, luscious tones and pads with a hint of the grid, an outline of the beat that has been excised from something that was once dance music, as opposed to ambient music that began as chords or a synth patch. The beat does, eventually, kick in, but with slippers on. Huxtable has a past in making drum & bass, as well as house, none of which I’ve heard. He has used the phrase “deep music” to describe his interests, and this would normally make me skittish but it seems right.