In the 1970's, there was a splendid little Swedish instrumental group called Lotus, who put out two wonderful albums, and then drifted into obscurity.
Kundalini is the second generation of the Lotus blueprint, but with a distinct Middle Eastern and Southeastern Asian focus. Band leader Arne Jonasson (also of the Holy River Family Band) plays a remarkable amount of stringed and wind instruments here. At once he plays the electric guitar in the fiery space rock tradition of Ozric Tentacles or Omnia Opera, while at others he seems comfortable strumming the traditional world string instruments of bouzouki (Greece), saz (Turkey / Iran), cümbüş (Turkey), nyckelharpa (Sweden) as well as wind instruments such as the mey (Turkey), zurna (Turkey), näverlur (Sweden), and recorder (mainly European). This is all backed by a crisp and energetic bass and drum team. And despite the wide variation of world sounds, the melodies are memorable, and the music rocks hard. To highlight but one track, 'Calusari' is brilliant and the melodies stay with you long after the listen is over. Kundalini also dabbles in the odd jazz instrumental, especially towards the end of the disc. Great album this one and it's too bad this was the end for Kundalini. A must pickup for fans of exotic space rock and fusion.
10/1/11 (new entry); 11/10/20
Criminally forgotten. Very good album!
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