Search - Harry Manx :: Road Ragas Live

Soulful synthesis

Duncan Mason | Currently in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates | 03/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The warmth and slight edge in Harry's voice give it a perfect "coffee house poet" sound; however, when blended with his love of the blues and Indian musical overtones, something unique is born: almost folksy, almost raga.

Mellow? Yes, but with a tunefulness and a lyrical depth that makes listening a truly moving experience. His songs are often poignant, and you can easily sense the long road he has travelled in his musical journey. Anyone familiar with the work of John Martyn will appreciate this genre, but Harry takes it somewhere different, somewhere special. Excellent."

Great, unique, fresh!!!

smitty | seattle | 03/24/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Driving along one Sunday several years ago mindlessly listening to the radio when halfway thru the playing of one of Manx's songs it occurred to me that this was something unlike anything I'd heard before. It was from his 1st album/CD "Dog My Cat". I thoroughly enjoyed his music, admittedly some songs more than others....but mostly because it was unabashedly new and expanded my musical world. It is bluesy, folksy....but in a new way. EVERYONE I've exposed to Manx has likewise liked his work. I now own everything except his just released CD (and that's coming). The advantage to this CD, Road Ragas, is that you get to hear much of what's on his 1st 2, ie Dog My Cat and Wise & Otherwise. The clean purity and clarity of his recordings give a real closeness. Highly recommended. For further exposure go to www.harrymanx.com for full length samples of his albums."

This is where the Harry Manx sound becomes cohesive

Nobody important | 07/05/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Harry Manx put out an interesting debut with Dog My Cat. Much of the album sounded like he was just a Kelly Joe Phelps wannabe, combining elegant-sounding lap slide guitar and smokey vocals in a mellow blues sound. However, that was intermingled with Indian raga-type playing on the Mohan Veena that Manx learned while studying under V.M. Bhatt (remember Meeting By the River with Ry Cooder?). On his second album, Wise and Otherwise, he started to mix blues and Indian influences more, instead of simply alternating between the styles. That brilliant album was also characterized by some sonic experimentation (although mostly acoustic). Then, on a pair of albums, Road Ragas Live, and West Eats Meet, Manx pulled together a truly cohesive sound that mixed the best of everything he had done before. What sets these two gems apart as the best of Manx's recordings so far is the fact that everything just blends together seamlessly. Manx will start out with a KJP-type blues riff, and then emphasize the raga influence on his solos with some of the most subtle and beautiful slide work you have ever heard. Hindustani slide guitarists, like V.M. Bhatt or Debashish Bhattacharya (whom I prefer to Bhatt), understand the importance of microtonal nuances. Sometimes, what really matters is just perfect control over the slide bar on a very narrow range of pitches rather than a flashy riff that includes more notes per second than a human should be capable of playing. Manx applies that principle here, and the result is probably the most beautifully seamless blend of blues and ragas yet recorded. This recording goes side-by-side with West Eats Meet as a masterpiece for that.



Further listening: Obviously, Kelly Joe Phelps (specifically, Lead Me On, Roll Away The Stone, and Shine Eyed Mister Zen). For other blends of Indian and Middle Eastern sounds with western forms, try Sandy Bull's Reinventions, Davy Graham's Folk, Blues and Beyond, Jonas Hellborg's The Word or Ars Moriende. With the exception of Graham, they have little blues influence, but they are wonderful examples of the potential to meld Eastern and Western sounds."