"A brilliant collaboration"
Paul Grabowsky's high-hitting Art Orchestra – exploring the zone between written and improvised music, and hence stacked with stellar jazz musicians – has collaborated brilliantly with one of southern India's finest drumming ensembles. The results are new, invigorating and exciting music. A remarkable thing is that instead of compromising both cultural traditions at play here, this music seems to extend them both. Elements such as call and response and elegant treatments of rhythmic pulse speak to common characteristics in the course of producing something original. While exploring Karnatic music variously from the point of view of melody or rhythm, at times there's an almost swing band flavour to the flaring horns replying to the Indian instruments; elsewhere, as Grabowsky notes, the band itself is like a huge drum. This is absolutely beautiful, both in creative reach and actual recorded substance.
- Australian Financial Review (Shane Nichols), June 2000
