We don’t hear much about the Asian underground these days. Those associated with it seem either to have been dropped, like Talvin Singh, or have moved increasingly overground, like Nitin Sawhney. Human is his most commercial album to date and owes as much to contemporary urban R&B as his Asian background. More song-based than previous albums, the range of voices (Sawhney doesn’t sing) is broad, from the pop stylings of Jacob Golden and Aqualung’s Matt Hayles to the Asian delivery of Natacha Atlas and Jayanta Bose. It’s all highly impressive. Yet somehow it still sounds like the kind of album that wins awards rather than hearts.
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