Ry Cooder & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt A Meeting By The River 2LP 45rpm 180g Vinyl Analogue Productions USA
Title: A Meeting By The River
Catalog Number: APW 29
Label: Water Lily Acoustics
Reissued by: Analogue Productions
Barcode: 753088202919
Original release year: 1993
Reissue year: 2008
Number of discs: 2
Revolutions per minute: 45 rpm
Disc size: 12"
Vinyl Weight Grade: 180gr
Total Item Weight: 511gr
Pressing country: USA
For Market Release in: USA
Added to catalog on: September 28, 2014
Last modified / Restocked on: December 25, 2022
Vinyl Gourmet Audiophile TOP 100: Yes
Note: Never eligible for any further discounts
Vinyl Gourmet Club: No
American composer and guitar legend Ry Cooder is joined by Indian musician V. M. Bhatt to create this extraordinary musical experience that evokes elements from many cultures and styles winning a Grammy Award in 1994 for Best World Music Album. The recording techniques used and the expert mastering of this double LP result in sublime audio quality, fabulous music with true audiophile sound!
Grammy Award in 1994 for Best World Music Album
Included in Tom Moon's book 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die
Featured in Vinyl Gourmet Audiophile TOP 100
- 180 Gram 45rpm Double Vinyl
- Pressed at QRP USA
- Mastered by Kevin Gray at AcousTech
- Cut from the Original Analog Master Tapes
American composer, musicologist and guitar legend Ry Cooder teams with North Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt to create an exquisite musical realm, with both musicians playing exceptional slide guitar. Their collaboration evokes musical elements from many cultures and styles. Percussion by Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Cooder's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek. This recording won a Grammy Award in 1994 for Best World Album.
"A Meeting by the River can best be described as a spontaneous outpouring of music, unhindered by convention or form, brought into being by musicians so supremely capable that the music is never labored, the technique of their craft always subservient to the final product. Cooder and Bhatt are genuine masters of the guitar and mohan vina, respectively. The latter, an instrument created by Bhatt himself, is a sort of hybrid between a guitar and a vichitra vina, and is played with a metal slide. This fact is just one of the many things that connect Bhatt's playing to Cooder's, who plays nothing but bottleneck guitar here.
The musical interplay between Cooder and Bhatt is nothing short of astounding, especially so considering that they met for the first time only a half-hour before the recording of this album. The voices of the two instruments blend marvelously, first alternating melodic statements, then doing so together, each dancing around the other, playing cat and mouse, probing, answering, reflecting. They are ably accompanied by a pair of percussionists: tabla player Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari and Cooder's own son, Joachim, on dumbek.
A Meeting by the River is one of those few cross-genre albums in which the listener never feels for a second that there is some kind of fusion going on; one does not hear the component parts so much as the integrated whole. However, one can theoretically separate guitar from vina, America from India, the Mississippi from the Ganges. Once this is done, the resulting music makes more sense than ever before, the combination of two traditions of stringed instruments that use slides to produce sound and value improvisation and voice-like phrasing. As good as this sounds on paper, the actual results are even more impressive. The splendor of the music is aided in its transmission by the fact that, like all Water Lily Acoustics releases, this album is masterfully recorded; each instrument is clear, distinct, and three-dimensional sounding. A Meeting by the River is a must-own, a thing of pure, unadulterated beauty, and the strongest record in Cooder's extensive catalog." - All Music Guide
"...Astonishingly, the four conversational yet adventurous tracks captured on A Meeting by the River were unrehearsed jams between the two masters, who had met only minutes before the session. The lesson is that Cooder and Bhatt not only knew how to play, but how to listen." - Daniel Durchholz, Stereophile
"...Passionate, mysterious, intricate, earthy, ethereal, moody and mystical, the rich musical improvisations on this recording defy categorization…The recording is as astonishing as the music: a harmonically complex, three dimensional, two-microphone purist production that will easily take its place at the top of the sonic heap in your record collection and that's a guarantee…this is among the most spacious, convincing three-dimensional recordings you will ever hear…An essential record in any 21st century vinyl collection." Music = 11/11; Sound = 11/11 – Michael Fremer, Analog Planet
"The sound is about as good as it gets, with almost no sense of recording gear between the listener and musicians, who are laid out in a solid horizontal line. The remarkable air and tangible "thereness" will take your breath away." - Wayne Garcia, The Absolute Sound
Musicians:
Ry Cooder, bottleneck slide guitar
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, mohan vina (12 strings instrument created by Bhatt, also slide guitar)
Sukhvindar Singh, tabla
Joachim Cooder, dumbek
Track Listing:
1. A Meeting By The River
2. Longing
3. Ganges Delta Blues
4. Isa Lei
Click here to listen to samples on YouTube.com ♫
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