Fuck this is good.


So I'm in this trendyish Indian restaurant the other night and they're playing that standard compilation house music crap they play when they are trying to be trendyish and it's all very standard and the naan is fairly standard and the decor is fairly standard, except there's a cool mint green art deco window where you can see the chef, but it's all very standard and then this fucking awesome song comes on and it's so good I ask the 16 year old, very non Indian, very putting herself through high school, waitress, what it is.

Me: Hi, excuse me, what's this song? - It's really good.

Waitress: I don't know, I 'll go find out for you.

Five minutes later

Waitress: It's a complilation the owners put together themselves of a whole bunch of songs, so I don't really know what that song was.

Me: Oh really? Oh, so you've got no idea?

Waitress: No, sorry.

Me: Okay. Sigh. Well thanks anyway.

Waitress: No worries, are you guys right for drinks?

Me: Actually can I grab another beer?

So I grab another beer and then start wondering what the song was and wonder how the hell I'm going to find out. I know it sounds a bit like Nitin Sawhney's work, but I've got all his albums, so I know it's not him and then I leave it for a bit until I'm at "work" the next day and I start to wonder how I'm going to find this song.

So I go to Google and I do a few searches for 'Indian style techno' and 'emotional dance music Indian samples' etc. and I get nowwhere.

So then I search for "like Nitin Sawhney" in inverted commas and I find a whole bunch of references to this guy called Talvin Singh and I read a few reviews and it sounds good so I go to iMESH and search for Talvin Singh and low and behold all these songs come up and I listen to them and they're fucking amazing. By this time I've forgotten what the song I heard the night before actually sounded like, but I don't care because this is so good and even though it could be described as 'like Nitin Sawhney' it's probably a bit more truw to its Indian roots and a bit more dancey, but just as emotive.

So then I go and buy the album the next day, well actually I don't buy it, I get it for free because my record store card has ten stamps on it which means I get a free CD, but that's beside the point. So then I scan the cover and put it up on the site as a feature album of the month, even though it was released over a year ago.

All of which proves two things:

a) Talvin Singh is fucking awesome
b) Downloading songs off the Internet makes you go and buy the album if it's good and record companies should stop whining