40 Million Feet

In April of 2018, sarangi player Shyam Nepali and acoustic guitarist Charlie Giagiari sat down in a Boston recording studio and spent four hours improvising together. This album documents that session, with extracts from it given titles like 'The First Step without Shackles' and 'Growing Wings on the Way Down.' Those who have had alarming experiences with free-improv music in the past should rest assured: in this case, 'free' doesn't mean either chaotic or skronky. It means spontaneously composed, but still richly melodic and harmonically logical. Nepali's sarangi keens and soars while Giragiari's guitar alternately plays melodies in unison and counterpoint, and drives the proceedings chordally. The resulting music is bittersweet and beautiful, sounding neither exactly like South Asian music nor like American music, but like something quite different from either. Very, very cool.