Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt - A Meeting By The River (Hybrid SACD)
Ry Cooder – bottleneck guitar, guitar, performer [click here to see more vinyl featuring Ry Cooder]
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt – Mohan veena, performer, slide guitar
Kavichandran Alexander – engineer, liner notes, producer
Joachim Cooder – dumbek
Tim de Paravicini – technical consultant
Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari – tabla
Written by Cooder, Bhatt, Lieut. A.W. Caten
1 Hybrid SACD
Original analog Master tape : YES
Stereo
Studio
Label : Analogue Productions
Original Label : Water Lily Acoustics
Recorded September 1992 at Christ the King Chapel, St. Anthony's Seminary, Santa Barbara, California
Recorded by Kavichandran Alexander
Produced by Kavichandran Alexander
Mastered by Kevin Gray at AcousTech Mastering
Originally released in 1993
Reissued in 2008
Tracks:
1. A Meeting By The River
2. Longing
3. Ganges Delta Blues
4. Isa Lei
Awards:
1994 Grammy Awards : Best World Music Album
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die
Reviews:
"… …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." Michael Fremer, Music Angle
"…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, August 2008
"…This record is a must-have for fans of Ry Cooder's explorations into global sounds. The playing is out of this world, and, on these cuts, it has less of a world music feel, and is almost bluesy at times. With the original sessions captured at 15 i.p.s. on all custom deParavicini gear, this is the ultimate stereo test record. The sound is as real, open and airy as it gets; not one more molecule of tone could possibly be put onto these black discs!" Jeff Dorgay, Tone Audio, No. 15, 2008
“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.” AllMusic Review by Daniel Gioffre
Ratings :
AllMusic : 4,5 / 5 , Discogs : 4.03 / 5