Paul Horn
Album: Paul Horn in India/Cosmic Consciousness - Paul Horn in Kashmir
Label: BGO
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.bgo-records.com/

From BGO another 2CD set and a mention of one of the daddies of New Age Music - Paul Horn. Despite his roots in jazz, after meeting and playing with Ravi Shankar in 1963, Horn set off into the world of Transcendental Meditation several years ahead of the Beatles. By 1967, Horn was living in India, and set about recording traditional Indian ragas. As an established sax- and flute-player, Horn began to explore Indian flute styles, the first examples of which are represented by the two albums on this CD.

Paul Horn in India sees him playing with tabla, tamboura, vichitra veena and violin (Satya Dev Pawar) on a series of seven traditional ragas. Paul Horn in Kashmir has a quartet with sitar (J.N. Shivpuri), tabla and tamboura. Both albums seek to present unembelished Indian music in an enjoyable, if reverential way. There is none of the inter-genre indo-jazz of a Harriott-Mayer group, nor the attempts to expand the traditional templates which made Shakti so successful. This is straight-ahead raga - with no rock. As such, you will either love it, or hate it as a period piece with hippy undertones.

Martin Price