When singer-songwriter Ali Sethi and composer and producer Nicolás Jaar collaborate, the result is a magnetic, powerful album. The first is American-Pakistani, the second is American-Chilean, and the music they make together is a precious confluence of their artistic universes: in each of the eight songs they offer, we recognize the sonic elegance of Nicolás Jaar and the Punjabi folk poetry tinged with tradition and modernity of Ali Sethi. Thus, the energy that emerges from the depths ofIntiha is as strange as it is melancholic. While Nicolás Jaar reinvents — with samples and improvisation — for the occasion the slow tracks of Telas, released in 2020, the 2023 record that he brings into the world with Ali Sethi is disturbingly dazzling. The latter notably explores feelings of belonging, love and loss through the form of the ghazal, which is originally a genre of poem from Persia of the past millennium. The piece Muddat is in this regard grandiose!
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