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Release Date: 16-10-2007
Label: Jaro Medien
Catalog Number: JARO4287-2
Barcode: 4006180428722
Musical Style: World
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What Will Be There [03:22] | 7 | Tell Me [04:48] |
| 2 | Another Land [04:23] | 8 | On The Road Again [05:48] |
| 3 | Like An Eagle [05:05] | 9 | It [03:16] |
| 4 | Man Machine (Part 1) [05:17] | 10 | Who Are You [04:48] |
| 5 | Man Machine (Part 2) [03:12] | 11 | My Way [03:50] |
| 6 | Feeling Blue [04:25] | 12 | Watermon In Easter Hay [07:34] |
Description:
The multi-instrumentalist Harry Payuta’s new CD Departure is full of catchy melodies you think you know but just can’t place: elements of world, blues, rock, pop and jazz come together and celebrate on this wonderful CD. Worldbeat? In any case, purely and simply good, a CD that gives you joy and never gets boring no matter how often you listen to it, partly because the last track, Zappa’s Watermelon In Easter Hay, played by Payuta on the sitar (incomparable), makes you long for more.
From the beginning, the theme of the new album Departure was to achieve the character of rock and pop songs. The sitar accordingly had to sound even more “Western” ... quite a challenge for Payuta: to develop what was already a very original sitar-playing style even further. The sitar tracks turned out so song-like that he began to consider adding vocals to two or three of the tracks. Matthias Monka was excited about the idea. He spent two weeks with the demo tapes before getting up in front of the microphone in Payuta’s studio one night. Three hours later, seven titles had been recorded to perfection, nearly all of them as “first takes”! Monka bid Payuta a good night and left him musing at his mixer.
Harry listened to the recordings a number of times, and then the decision practically made itself: Monka’s soul-n-rock voice and the rock-n-jazz lines of the sitar produced a very unique new sound: surprising, suspenseful and very melodic ... for the very first time, there would be a Payuta & Friends album exclusively with vocal titles!
Another first is the inclusion of two cover titles on the record: On the Road Again by Canned Heat and Watermelon in Easter Hay by Frank Zappa. For years, Harry Payuta had been putting off covering a Zappa title, but in the meantime the idea had ripened and the sound of the sitar gave this instrumental an entirely new, independent appeal ... unmistakably Zappa, unmistakably Payuta.
Biography:
In the mid 1990s Harry Payuta undertook productive collaboration with old Krautrock heroes from bands like Embryo and Amon Düül, leading to the foundation of the ethno trance jazz project Ear Tranceport. The band, also integrating musicians from Mali and Morocco, was soon touring Europe. More or less concurrently, this multifaceted musician was also active in the dance-floor area, playing and touring with the Mojo-Club of Hamburg.
Since 2000, Harry Payuta has come out with five CDs under his own name or with the band Payuta & Friends, a series of albums initially leaning towards the Australian didjeridoo as well as various trance, ambient and soft techno elements. From the very beginning, though, they also contained certain hints of Payuta’s love for Indian sounds. In the meantime, the multi-instrumentalist (sitar, surbahar, tanpura, guitar, E-bass, didjeridoo, keyboards and percussion) has declared the sitar to be his main instrument. It is the sitar that defines the sounds and the melodies!
In 2002, Payuta also made a name for himself as a remixer. He appeared on two tracks of the remix CD Spirits of Tuva, dedicated entirely to the fascinating overtone and laryngeal song of the Mongolian group Huun-Huur-Tu, an ensemble in demand the world over. In September 2002, that album made it to the very top of the European world music charts. For a musician like Harry Payuta, long and well acquainted with overtone music, the collaboration with Huun-Huur-Tu was a logical development.
