Kalistani Major History

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Quickstop issues Follow-up to "Early Wakeup Committee" on VDR
On the Bodhisattva Trail Again hailed as "groundbreaking" by critics
Vrassa City, Duchy of Vrassa
April 11, 5539


On the Bodhisattva Trail Again is widely hailed as a production masterpiece

Dubbed the "Provocateurs of Raga Rock", the Luthorian-Kalistani band Quickstop have released their sophomore album called On the Bodhisattva Trail Again. This 15 track album expands on their forward thinking alternative album released two years ago called The Early Wake Up Committee. On their latest album, they continued to bring in raga influences and use Ananti language and Vascanian references on several tracks. But they also make a serious attempt at reaching a more mainstream audience, not necessarily by compromising, but by cleaning up a lot of their production techniques to make the sound much cleaner, and almost reminiscent of early rock radio, and writing songs aimed at pop radio.

"The Sitar and dholki, or traditional hand drum, are still prominent on this record, as is the Ananti language," said Ajay Bhattacharia, who is the primary singer, songwriter, and now, producer of this album. "But we also wanted to make the music accessible to more people. We had to tame a few of the harder elements for the singles to maybe get people interested in checking out the rest of the really mind altering stuff on the record, to kind of light the path, if you follow." Bhattacharia was joined on the boards by Kalistani producer Righteous Jah, who really stressed the clean and crisp production. "We also recorded this album specifically for digital platforms, and had to muddy it up a little when we brought it over to vinyl," said Bhattacharia. "Its meant to be played on a digital player rather than an analog one, simply because we wanted to do stuff in the studio that I don't think will transfer over well onto Vinyl." As a result, there were two masters made by Bhattacharia and Jah, resulting in an almost complete remastered edition to be released simultaneously. "We can highlight different things, based on what you listen to it on, so you'll get a different experience."

For the effort to make the LP more audience friendly, the band created several pop adjacent songs, like the early cut "Record Single Lady", that talks about underappreciated international musicians and record labels that Bhattacharia listened to in Luthori as a boy, nearly fully in Vrassan. "We have a lot of Ananti on the record," said Bhattacharia, "But we left most of that in intros or interludes, and most of the deepcuts." This album also leans more heavily into hiphop and funk than their first album did. "We are continuing to explore where hiphop, rock and raga tend to overlap," said Bhattacharia. "There is a sort of natural alignment there, especially in the rhythm. If they are not branches of the same tree, at least they speak in cognates." The band also brought in two new members, Calvin Weston, who plays percussion, and David Strange, who plays keyboards.

The album, while aiming at pop audiences, still could be classified as Alternative, simply because the band isn't writing much pop music. "Few of the songs are verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, chorus, the way pop songs are," said Bhattacharia. "Try as we might we only have so many of those kinds of songs in us. And the ragas certainly do not lend to that." The band utilizes a lot of samples from various other really obscure music, and clips from films to more deeply identify with the elite hip hop audiences. There is spoken word poetry set to the band's music on the album. They even explore the country-inflected rock on the album's title track, where the sitar mimics the sound of a tinny steel guitar quite convincingly and vocal duties are shared by Lucid City, Suldanor alt-folk singer Dorleen Bratton.

The band also relaxed its efforts to create acid rock, and switched to more mainstream intoxicants for this album. "Its really amazing that we got the record done at all," said Bhattacharia. "We were smoking pretty seriously throughout the entire recording process, all of us were. We smoked a lot of weed. It's really good for the voice, it gets that little rasp you hear in the songs. Our engineer, an old friend we asked to come in from Luthori, smoked so much that he forgot where he was and kind of flipped out a little but. We had to get him checked into a hospital overnight till he sobered up, and he promptly quit the next day and flew home to Luthori--as you'd imagine, he couldn't handle what we smoke here in Kalistan. We continued on after he left, but you can hear the difference between the work he did and the work I did when I filled in for him. I am not an audio engineer, and soon VDR sent in one of their in-house guys to finish the record."

Despite the departure of the engineer, critics hailed this album as "Groundbreaking" and "essential" in reviews. "We don't often get such international flavor in Kalistan, despite the country being so open to new music," said critic Henry Crocker, from the Kaliburg Free Press in a very positive review. "Promoters in Kalistan practically have to beg other musicians to play in Kalistan, its ridiculous. So when you hear music that sounds not only so different as Quickstop's stuff, but also know just how good and interesting it is, and its domestic stuff, well, people go crazy for it. This music is not only very interesting, but its pretty much a masterpiece of production, very forward leaning and interested in moving music in Kalistan forward. It's both accessible and progressive, and that is a rare combination."

The album On the Bodhisattva Trail Again on VDR is out in stores now, and will likely hit number 1 on the Weekly M1 Hot 100 Album Poll this coming week, if early sales reports are on target. The band has also released a double A-Side to promote the record, "The Goddess Kali/We're on Yr Side", along with accompanying videos, both of which you can see here:

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI2ltVYKAKY]
Video for Quickstop's "The Goddess Kali"[/align]

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgoGBzZbOc0]
Audio from Quickstop's "We're on Yr Side"[/align]