Run Goddess Run – Mahamaya Experience (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

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May 29, 2023 

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The music that comes out of the Mahamaya Experience is, if nothing else, eclectic and adventurous. A core of South and South East Asian sounds, predominantly sitar driven, becomes a springboard to dive into other styles and genres, resulting in a heady blend of Occident meets Orient, tradition and experimentation, the what was and the what might be.

Run Goddess Run sees such fusions being taken to an even further degree. Here, those core sounds, identifiably seeped in the sounds and style of that continent, are pushed through a jazz template, and the result is a beautiful, free-form sonic adventure.

With the sitar perhaps taking the place of what would typically, in the Western jazz traditions at least, be the role of the saxophone, trumpet or piano, it takes an odyssey through stylings and timings, driven to even greater heights by complex and ornate percussion, the additional string inclusions and all manner of eclectic and exotic instrumentation.

Run Goddess Run is the most western-leaning Mahamaya Experience has sounded, though that isn’t to say that they don’t explore all manner of cultural sounds via these creative clashes. But this is the one time they sound like the music is the house band of a dimension and distance-bending music club. One that seems that if you take the right-hand door out of the club, you will find yourself in a side street of Logan Square, the jazz music heart of Chicago, and the other that leads to the backstage area of a music festival in Kolkata.