Keshavara

KESHAVARA sport splendid moustaches, wear bold headpieces and speak an adventurous patois of English, Hindi, German and Gibberish. On their new album "III", the Cologne-based outfit led by German-Indian musician Keshav Purushotham creates music in a way other people mix their cocktails after they've already enjoyed three drinks: Washed-out kraut-pop and diasporic dub- not-dub excursions are roughly measured out and then shaken wildly. Sweet and mesmerizing melodies, borrowed from a fantastic no man's land in the border region between exotic library compositions and psychedelic soundtracks, merged with the grooves of a rhythm section that would have felt right at home in the recording studios of mid-seventies’ funky Beirut. The outcome is a seductively colourful cocktail with the dazzling effect of hallucinogenic Jell-O, topped with a surrealist sugar rim. Music that shimmers and flickers like a mirage in the desert. One moment Keshavara sound like an Ennio Morricone soundtrack for a Bollywood movie, and the next like a Curt Boettcher-produced Eden Ahbez song. With "III", Keshavara prove themselves to be shrewd sound alchemists and accomplished travellers between worlds, a soft power whose strength is fed by the band’s members’ enormous musicality, their love of storytelling and their surrealistic wit.