Cerebral yet guttural. Eclectic yet familiar. AkashA’s music is a potent marriage of paradoxes, and there’s no better way to appreciate that than on the Malaysian band’s new album, Karakoram Highway.
IT’S easy to brand AkashA a poor man’s Shakti. Yes, that band with outrageous song titles and interminable jams! But to typecast the nation’s brightest world fusion music proponents as mere copy cats is a grave injustice to the band and the artform itself. Besides, the music bears little resemblance to British guitarist John McLaughlin’s world beaters.