I communicate with loved ones as best I can, sending and receiving valentines and giving thanks. What of it? What of the tape on the telephone pole flapping in the wind? Or wind chimes in a neighbor’s yard, sounding like gamelans? Or wind in the trees? The air is cold, my walk brief. And there in the sky, the moon, near full. Same numbers, same time of day, two days in a row. A waxing ¾ moon appears in the sky above the dome of the most notorious of the city’s landmarks, the one referred to by locals as the “Phallus Palace.”ĥ:55 turns up again as I rise from one of the park’s benches and continue on my way. Walking the bend of the park, he reads a plaque about the 1778 Salem Waterworks, part of the park’s past. Birdsong relaxes him as he sits at a table gazing toward the house on Shady. “This park can be a place to perform the Work,” thinks the Time Traveler. But what was before a desolate field is now a park. Construction work over by the ballpark up the hill. Birds, motorcycles, cars cruising up and down First and Second Streets. The neighborhood has a bit of an edge, always has, air charged with noise. Another figure sings to me from a bus stop.

A figure in large, loosely-fitted clothing serenades me as I walk, singing “Dress You Up” from a street corner as I crest a hill. Dig it.My therapist’s office is a short walk away from the house on Shady. It’s all delivered with lavish abandon and a sense of fun. Hopped-up flamenco, reggae, hip-hop, ’70s funk, psychedelia, and even a little musique concrète make appearances on other tracks. Gopal Shankar Misra over a tight drum and bass backdrop. The slow dance groove of the title track features lots of interplay between Shankar and veena player Dr. If Mike Meyers decides to do a third Austin Powers movie, here’s his soundtrack. “Tori” is pure ’60s spy-movie music, with its swirling flute and funky backbeat. There are some wonderfully retro sounds on this disc, as well as some uniquely forward-looking material. The project, as it was now called, appeared at WOMAD and toured up until the time of Shankar’s death in March of 1999. Zaman put together a group of crack musicians to work with Shankar. His music was recently rediscovered by DJ and producer Sam Zaman, also known as State of Bengal. Sitarist Ananda Shankar, the nephew of Ravi Shankar, has been blending Indian instrumentation with Western sounds for decades, using rock and jazz grooves as launching pads for some very inspired jams. This is a very groovy release, in the true late-’60s/early-’70s sense of the word.

Artist: The Ananda Shankar Experience and State of Bengal

Ananda shankar walking on rapidshare