ACT

Jazz, avant-rock and traditional Indian music all come together on the magnificent debut from a new trio comprised of Prasanna on guitar and voice, tabla player Nitin Mitta and modern piano great Vijay Iyer. Together, this ethnocentric threesome create a strain of raga-bop that truly sounds like nothing else in the world. Utilizing the rich, lyrical quietude of Iyer’s playing as a launch pad, this combination of musicians flex a remarkable ability to take the piano-led trio concept to a whole new level of adventure.

“Tribal Wisdom” employs mantra-like vocalizing and trance-inducing rhythms over a intertwining braid of piano and guitar passages that all come together like a button-down Sun City Girls, while “Gauntlet” features a kinetic sense of interplay that cumulates in a no-wave like pulse that would have been a perfect fit for the old Tonic stage. But at its root, Tirtha evokes a stirring sense of melodicism that administers a romantic fluidity akin to a hypothetical Undercurrent -esque conversation between Bill Evans and Robbie Basho, especially on tracks like “Abundance” and the comely closing number “Entropy and Time”. And it is that fine line walked between beauty and madness which makes this LP such a unique and revelatory experience to the learned ear.