Charanjit Singh: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat

I judged this one on its cover. Even if I hadn't even glanced at the back of the CD to notice it was recorded in 1982 with a Roland TR-808 (classic analog drum machine), TB-303 (classic analog bass synth), and Jupiter-8(classic analog polysynth) (a gear set for which I would gladly give an extra left arm if I'd been born with one), the title Ragas to a Disco Beat seemed a safe bet.

I was right. Although, in true raga form, the tunes consist of little more than a scale selection and then 5 minutes of noodling (and thus one track is not much different from the next), the sound and noodle quality are both fantastic. There was no MIDI implementation on these classic devices, but Roland allowed all their analog gear at the time to sync up without using MIDI, so the bassline, drums and arpeggios are always perfectly matched up to each other timing-wise. Thus this is basically an hour of a skilled musician jamming on a Jupiter-8 with rhythmic backup designed specifically for that synth. You won't get any of these tracks stuck in your head later, but while listening they are incredibly hypnotic for such basic stuff. I highly recommend it if it sounds interesting to you at all.