Zali Krishna is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/songwriter/bricoleur and multimedia artist with fingers in many pies and his head firmly in the clouds. He plays electric sitar with drone duo Raagnagrok, and digressive guitar with psych-prog landscapists Durga, as well as recording and performing solo under many noms de guerres: Entropy Circus, Krishna, The Benelux, Royal Free Electric, &c. He has recently recorded an album called ‘In Den Einkaufwagen, Oida’.
His output is often genre-defying, existing in a space between psychedelia, jazz, glitch, light comedy, krautrock, skronk and whatever he feels like doing at the time. Every performance is different. It may jump-cut between plaintive songs of loss, free jazz and loop-based experimentation, or maybe just wig out hugely for a half hour at a time.
Picture by Richard Guest
The Spacehorn sounds amazing, but what actually is it and how do you make it? Zali Krishna created a new breath controlled instrument and sound, using an electronic wind instrument and an Axoloti board, and reveals how he did it.
If one man can be said to have brought Indian music to the west, that man was Ravi Shankar.
If there is one thing that will give a band an unchallengeable advantage over their peers and win them the instant respect of the audience it’s a synth dude (or dudette) who has risen to the occasion and strapped on a keytar. You wear the ‘tar: you win. It’s that simple.