Spoiled for the last few weeks, Coke Studio turn West towards the United Kingdom and choose Rochester born Nitin Sawhney to beacon this week’s live performances. Providing 6 composition’s which include for the majority London singer Nicki Wells, Mercury Prize nominee Sawhney uses his own personal life experiences to influence the music drawn into this episode.

Whilst the episode did not provide us with waves of amazement, Vachan is a stormy, rock number that really develops into its own with vocalist Mahesh Vinayakram given full freedom to apply his own learned South Indian Karnatik vocal style. Beginning with a myriad of rhythmic variations and the rare morsing instrument, Sawhney utilises the electric guitar to elevate the strong, improvised vocals by Vinayakram accompanied with backing vocals by Nicki Wells and Samidha Joglekar. With controlled percussion, the performance really accelerates into 4th gear midway through and is let to volcanically explode providing a real sense of deep colour and structure to the whole arrangement.

Click here to watch our favourite picks from this season so far – Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3

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