Sundae by Angad Berar–Album Review
Sundae by Angad Berar–Album Review
Every once in a while, the right album will come along and it will help you tap into those fleeting moments of nostalgia, deja vu, or pleasantly dissociative states. Music that facilitates leaving your body to become light radiating through leaves or ripples on a pond when the rain hits it. Angad Berar’s Sundae does just that, and this might be the exact music you need right for summer (if it is indeed summer where you are!) This is an album that you could play over and over while you make art or just exist in those liminal spaces. Play it again months from now, and all the feels that linger between the five senses will come rushing back!!
Angad Berar settled in Berlin three years ago after having left India. He explains that he “moved here for a change of life…to a place which allows me to be express without fear and political repercussions”. He elaborates, “Three or four years ago, the political climate in India had become quite charged.
There was a growing sense of emotional allegiance to the government—so much so that people would go to great lengths to silence anyone who opposed or even made light of it”.
Sundae is Angad Berar’s fourth album, but only his second with the help of a full band. He co-produced the album with Karuta Record’s own Kartik Pillai (Jamblu, Begum, Peter Cat Recording Co.). It took a couple of years for Berar to write the album and its material manifested in different locations including Goa, Delhi, and Berlin. Eventually, it took five days for Berar and company to record the album in Kartik’s studio in Faridabad.
Berar’s guitar work does great things to make it seem that any hour could be the golden hour and shadows get really long! I can’t help but think of when former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor’s playful and curly nudging up and down the neck in “Moonlight Mile” concludes. In other instances, I was reminded of post-grunge era’s Love Battery, and the guitarist’s frenetic use of a wah pedal- that sound that whips into a silvery foam that will circle the drain faster and faster. Some guitars are amplified to the point where strings seem much larger than you, like giant grooved cables and you witness the vibrations that are magnified. You’ll hear this particularly in “Jam 2”. Elsewhere in this track, a fizzing organ stands shoulder to shoulder with a fuzz guitar, while a more overdriven guitar snakes in and out. A warm bass placates and is almost the Maître d’ of this song. You’ll enjoy trying to isolate just how many guitar parts there are- they sneak around throughout the song!
“Driving with You” (Berar’s first-ever vocal track) arrives suddenly and you’re very content to be brought along for the ride. Vocals kick in and that’s when you realize you’re in the passenger seat. As you look out the passenger window, you realize your body shares that same radiation you see simmering up from the asphalt and you like that sensation. This track also features a bouncy beat with toppy drums played with brushes. Later in the song, there is a moment that feels like you’ve broken some kind of capsule, and there is a chemical reaction at which point everything becomes twice as effervescent! “Jam 4” is another great driving song, but this time you might contemplate commuters in traffic. You’ll be comforted as you enjoy your special plane and you’ll think to yourself, “I know something the others in their cars don’t know!”
Christina Rahm
Guitars can also be narrative, as in “Jam 4”. They tell an engaging and credible story. Guitars can be rusty and rotating, in the same sunlight where the shadows are long. I am also picking up soothing hints of The Verve’s “Star Sail”, and some similarities to the guitar work of Khruangbin’s Mark Speer.
There are also wonderful soundscapes throughout the album. You may hear what sounds like a Capiz shell mobile swinging gently in an afternoon breeze.
He added Rajasthani folk music in the first track. It sounds off in the distance and it gives you the feeling that there are still layers to your unconscious that need to be peeled back. You might hear rubbery nebulous objects in hidden corners, not unlike those you might hear in Steve Miller Band’s “Space Cowboy”. All of these wonderful elements offer you things to play with and sounds to marvel at.
Christina Rahm
The last track “Jam 7” is gentle come-down music. You can be sure that the ambient lighting that your pre-trance self set up beforehand won’t yell at you! This track is a nice way to close and contemplate the album. It will definitely reverberate afterwards once it stops.
Sundae is highly recommended! It is going into heavy rotation for me. It could easily become your new go-to if you enjoy soothing, calming psychedelia. After hearing it enough times, your neurons will be very excited when you hit play!
Riffindots is Britta Pejic. Britta is a musician. Songwriter. Artist. Foreign Language Teacher. Grew up in Maine. Lived in France (The Basque Country). Now back in New England. Enjoys getting lost. Makes a lot of songs at home, puts them into a canister, then into a hatch and then through her own pneumatic tube system under the Atlantic. The songs are vacuumed out the other end, dusted off and polished by Console Lole, her loyal sound engineer back in Basque Country. It’s a system that works well for her. Follow @riffindots for cartoonish fun and visual mayhem or simply enjoy her music here: https://brittapejic.bandcamp.com/.
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