Gidi Farhi and Nishad Pandey - In a Heart Beat (Self Release) [Folk Jazz]

The Slow Music Movement
2 days ago
1 min read

The cover for Gidi Farhi and Nishad Pandey's, Hey Yaldati album, showing a stylized illustration of diverse faces in blue and orange patterns. Text reads "HEY YALDATI," "GIDI FARHI," and "NISHAD PANDEY." Abstract design.

Gidi Farhi is a stylistically restless, Berlin residing bass player with jazz roots, a fondness for Americana in its many forms and an improvisatory, "live-composing" inclination, so a project with music teacher Nishad Pandey - a similarly open minded genre fluid guitarist with jazz, experimental pop and world music projects makes all sorts of sense. Just not to traditionalists.

Unsurprisingly their new album, Hey Yaldati covers a lot of bases, upsetting more familiar music forms as it goes and is well worth your time if you fancy some whimsical, occasionally weirdy, electro-acoustic jazz not jazz, meets mid-Atlantic folk with a dash of ethno-ambiguos roots music. It's a trip.

But sitting snugly three tracks in is the made for TSMM, contemplative joys of "In a Heartbeat" which is hitting all sorts of sweet spots. Yaldati gets things rolling by nailing a simple, warm but deeply hypnotic guitar motif that, with some subtle variation and a mid-track breakdown breather, repeats endlessly, altering perceptions along the way. Farhi wisely sits back, infusing Pandey's finger picked minimalism with some sparse, borderless bass work - a consummate lesson in less is more musicianship. As an acoustic duet it works a treat, but someone also has an electronic box of tricks and an eery electronic wind whistles throughout the track, juxtaposing the warm weather guitar finger picking with a chillier machine breeze, to the benefit of both. The album is well worth your time, but "In a Heartbeat" is a must.