Glass Beams – Mahal

Includes Free Digital Download Code - Orange Vinyl Edition.

Glass Beams have today announced their highly anticipated new EP, "Mahal", which will be released on their new label - Ninja Tune.

The Melbourne, Australia-based trio around founding member Rajan Silva was formed by rekindling childhood memories of his father, who had emigrated from India to Melbourne in the late 1970s. Silva remembered watching a DVD with his father over and over again: "Concert For George", the star-studded tribute to the late Beatles member, George Harrison, which was performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2002 and featured the legendary Indian sitar player, Ravi Shankar, performing with his daughter, Anoushka, alongside Western icons such as Eric Clapton, his former bandmate Paul McCartney and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, with whom Harrison played in the quintessential "supergroup", the Traveling Wilburys, until shortly before his passing. This overlap of musical styles was also reflected in Silva's father's record collection, which featured the sounds of legendary Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle and the Mangeshkar lineage alongside the music of blues legends such as B.B. King and Muddy Waters. Silva was particularly taken with the fusion of Western musical styles with traditional Indian music; a concept pioneered by Indian artists such as R.D. Burman, Ananda Shankar and the Kalyanji-Anandji duo. This cross-fertilization of East and West, of old and new, is a feeling that the band has tried to capture in their self-produced works. In their output, Glass Beams present a timeless fusion of cultures and sounds that shine through a prism of live instrumentation and DIY electronica, wrapped in a hypnotic and mystical visual world that they themselves have created.