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Saagara’s new album 3, is the third installment of this acclaimed collaboration between Polish producer/multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel and four virtuosic musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) and violinist Mysore N. Karthik.

It’s a buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms and pulsating electronic patterns. An album of deeply transformative compositions that navigate tradition and experimentation as they move towards the universal.

Saagara’s 3 is released via tak:til, Glitterbeat’s instrumental music imprint, and home to artists such as Brìghde Chaimbeul, Širom, Jon Hassell and Park Jiha. Tak:til loosely navigates Hassell’s idea of “Fourth World” musics, musics that blur the divide between (so-called) futurists and (so-called) traditionalists.
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Wacław Zimpel works with a diverse array of music. The Warsaw-based musician/producer started out playing free jazz with artists like Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake and Joe McPhee. Later, he went from minimalism inspired albums (Lines) to folk-trance collaborations (Saagara) to synth-buzzing solo releases, along the way developing a vivid electronic music language through collaborations with British electronic artists James Holden and Sam Shackleton (amongst others). The New York Times has aptly called him a “musical chameleon.”

“Now I think I feel more like a producer than an instrumentalist,” he admits. Zimpel’s most recent albums, the synth majesty of Massive Oscillations (2020) and the pandemic-era solo album Train Spotter (2023) – where field recordings of public transport were used as the starting point for pulsing electronic passages – seem to have clearly influenced the.......
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