Arikomban Space by Ishaaq Aarkistra

Ishaaq, AKA Isak Klasson, creates a musical fusion based on his origins: the Indian and the Western. He was raised in Sweden, but he is half-Indian, and holds dual Indian Swedish citizenship. His journey in music began back in the early 2000s, as singer, guitarist and songwriter with the band Speedmarket Avenue, who released two albums and a string of singles and EPs on cult Spanish indie-pop label Elefant. In recent years, as a solo artist under the name Ishaaq, he has moved towards a more spiritual, raga-based style, influenced by his Indian heritage. His two solo albums to date, 2021’s Best of Klasson and 2023’s Andra, were both produced by Jari Haapalainen. The latter was believed to be the world’s first LP made of oil-free, compostable material.

Ishaaq’s latest collection of songs under the banner Ishaaq Aarkistra (a Swedish twist on the Urdu word for “orchestra”) are his most ambitious and expansive to date. They saw him assemble a cast of his favourite musicians in one of the world’s top recording studios, to improvise freely and at length on drums, synth, tabla, flute, pedal steel, and vocals, letting the mood and the spirit guide them. Ishaaq and Haapalainen then painstakingly chopped up and edited the live recordings to create new, deeply layered, textured and immersive compositions, full of pulsing grooves, hip-hop breakbeats, psychedelic soundscapes and positive energy. To make an album this way had been, says Ishaaq, “a dream of mine for a long time… since I learned that Can and Miles Davis and others made some of their strongest music this way”.

The Ishaaq Aarkistra ensemble includes Swedish jazz musicians Daniel Bingert on synth and bass, drummer Konrad Agnas (“Sweden’s best drummer in my ears,” says Ishaaq) and Simon Svärd on pedal steel. “Of course, we needed Indian-trained musicians,” Ishaaq notes, “and I really wanted flute, so I asked around for the best Bansuri player in Europe. I was told about Nicolo Melocchi, from Italy, who has studied Indian classical music forever, and who is familiar with the North Indian ragas.” Suranjana Ghosh is, he says, “Sweden’s tabla queen”. The dynamic Indian singer Tripti Sharma, also based in Sweden, has “an incredible voice which can evoke so many emotions, both powerful and fragile”.

Tracked live over a single long day at RMV Studio with only light overdubs, then delicately cut and adapted by Ishaaq and Haapalainen, the resulting eight tracks are a journey through a vast musical landscape without borders, full of freely fluctuating moods, tempos, patterns and textures. ‘Grunderna’ is a dizzying, psychedelic kaleidoscope of swirling analogue synth and bansuri flute solos over a thundering breakbeat and a snaking raga-based riff. The soulful, swaying ‘Dåligt Väder’ channels Byard Lancaster and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Wrapped around Bingert’s circling bass melody, Melocchi’s Raga Bhimpalasi flute improvisations and a whispered vocal, ‘Asha-Pasha’ is essentially one long extended breakbeat (“just the best part of a song repeated over and over,” notes Ishaaq, “just the icing on the cake”). ‘Aarzi Jagah’, which means roughly “temporary state”, is five minutes of drifting, peaceful ambience set to the healing tones of the Bansuri flute. Closer ‘Ojämna Lag’ lands the album on a softly contrasting note with its spacey reggae rhythm, Swedish vocals and more conventional song structure. A “spiritual pop tune,” says Ishaaq, “that this supergroup of course performs in a really great way”.

Ishaaq hails Arikomban Space as “my portal to the next world… it has opened the door for me to create music in a freer and more collective way. The album is named after Arikomban, a rice-crazy Indian elephant from southern India, where my family is from. He got famous for breaking into people’s homes and stealing food. He was called a ‘rogue’ in the Indian media, but they forgot to tell us that there had been a lot of building construction in Arikomban’s natural environment, which changed his idea of what his ‘space’ is. He suddenly found rice in new places. What else would he do but go into these homes and eat it?”

DIY label, run by Pictish Trail, from his caravan on the Isle of Eigg, Scotland.