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The Unseen Guest happened when Declan Murray was traveling in south India
with his $5.00 balsa-wood guitar and met up with Amith Narayan. They became friends,
spent some time jamming together and later decided to record their debut album. The first
thing I realized when listening to this disc is that these guys are having enormous fun.
It’s tough to squeeze this style into any one genre. It’s a synergistic
marriage of Western and Indian music. It swings, it rocks, it’s exotic and bluesy. It
does a little bit of everything. And it features many instruments that I can’t even
pronounce, like dholaks, ganjra and mrindangam, along with some fantastic piano and slide
guitar stylings. Out There is rich with brilliant musicianship and melodic vocal
harmonies, reminiscent, at times, of Simon and Garfunkel.
The opening track, “Let Me In,” has a great beat and a masterful carnatic
violin solo. This is a classic style of playing, developed in southern India, whereby
the violin is tuned differently and played with different postures and holds than the
Western violin.
The lyrics are intriguing. The title track flows
beautifully, walking the streets on a rainy night with a man who can’t find his own
heartbeat and would change it if he could.
The percussion on this disc is
unique and powerful, the mix is clean and the sound is sublime. This may be The Unseen
Guest’s debut album, but I’m looking forward to a lot more great stuff from them. For
more info, check out their site at unseenguest.com
