Rupa: Disco Jazz Vinyl LP Rupa

Highly sought after ’82 Indian disco/fusion LP given first official reissue. This fiendishly elusive and addicting LP has been harder and harder to come by as original copies have topped out at upwards of $750 USD. Thanks to the power of the algorithm, the album (and specifically the track “Aaj Shanibar”) reached a wider audience, pushing the demand for the LP – and thus a proper reissue – through the roof. While not straight disco, and certainly not jazz, Rupa Biswas’ sole release from 1982 creates the perfect fusion platter: East meets West, synthesizer and guitars meet sarod, and Bollywood meets Balearic to create four brilliant cuts of musical genius. Recorded at Living Room Studios in Calgary by a “crack team” of Indian and Canadian studio cats, Rupa and the production crew groove through the tracks like a hot knife through butter. The opener, “Moja Bhari Moja” locks us in with the funky baseline and rhythm guitar before Rupa’s vocal’s steal the show. “East West Shuffle” sounds like a straight up ESG or Liquid Liquid cut, a sure-shot foot-stomper. The song most people may know is, as mentioned before, “Aaj Shanibar”, which closes out the A-side. It’s a beautiful cinematic sunset disco tune, a “cosmic disco killer” that’ll be stuck in your head for months (in only the best way possible). Stretching itself over the whole of the B-side is “Ayee Morshume”, the kind of cosmic disco that grooves through endless solos and mesmerizing vocals. This official reissue, remastered from the original analog source material with the permission and blessing of the producers + performers, is selling out fast, so DO. NOT. SLEEP!

• black vinyl pressing
• remastered from analog source
• music label: Numero Group 2019

reviewed by Richard Cashmere 4/2019