I-D
Magazine N0.137 New Faces Issue. Feb 95
Tony
Marcus
It was the track Ruthless Compassion on Bedouin Ascent's eponymous debut
EP that suggested a strong talent had arrived. It had a densely sensual
energy and inner calm that was different from any other techno record.
Way beyond dance, this was the tense, low-light sound of sweat on hot
flesh. And you didn't need to be into Derrick May or rave culture to
appreciate it: just feeling kind of physical, warm and spiritual would
do. Now, over two years later, Bedouin (aka Kingsuk Biswas (or Biz)
has released a debut LP on Rising High, Science, Art And Rltual, that's
been hailed as a classic of the new semi-techno, semi-ambient music
of the 90s. And like that first single, the album imagines a world where
pagan ritual and sexual magick linger over soft dub-Inflected rhythm.
"When I first started making music, I saw it as part of a long
tradition of people that were creative going right back to primitive
people rubbing a couple of stones together, says Biz. Now 26,
he talks about himself as a human being responding to his historical,
present and spiritual environment. Living in London, he works from a
bedroom studio and meshes flutes, temple bells and gongs with electronic
and computer-mapped textures. At once archaic and futuristic, his tracks
gently inspire the mind with a strange set of possibilities. "
There's a lot to be said for mysticism in the true sense of the word,"
Biz offers, "not as some kind of external deity, but as a means
by which the world takes to communicate with us. By being just out of
reach, it instills us with a need to strive further. And what's really
important is the fact that someone strives rather than achieves because
achievements in themselves are pretty abstract."
Plans for this year include an album that reworks some older, unreleased
material and, if we're lucky, some more of that late-night tantric-shag
music.