LOS ANGELES (Encoded Music) - Multi-instrumentalist
Praful is back with his sophomore album, Pyramid In Your Backyard, and it is a mind-blowing collage of electronic club, world music and jazz. Recently released by Rendezvous Entertainment in association with N-Coded
Music and Therapy Recordings, the record was produced, recorded, arranged and mixed by Roberto Adani,
Daniel Wolf and Praful, who also composed the seventy-plus minute mix of a dozen new trance, dance, world music and chill jazz grooves. The first track serviced to radio was "Moon Glide," a song unlike any other heard on commercial radio. It features Praful's gravity-free saxophone hovering gracefully over modern tango rhythms and spiced with haunting chords from a Wurlitzer piano.
The music on Pyramid In Your Backyard is as genre defying as
Praful himself, who perilously juggles hyperkinetic drum & bass dance vibes, funky electronic trip-hop beats, cool jazz nuances, spacey rock riffs, and poetically poignant melodies wrapped in luxurious veils of sacred Sufi chants, primal African percussion, sensual Brazilian overtones, passionate Latin accents, and bliss-inducing, ambient meditations. While playing a myriad of instruments, including saxes, flutes, harmonium, guitar, tanpura, keys, piano and even voice ("
Naked"), Praful's unique vision and artistry remain the focal point.
Pyramid In Your Backyard was recorded at Adani & Wolf's Studio De Boot, a boat floating peacefully in an Amsterdam canal, the city
Praful currently calls home. This proved to be an idyllic setting since it secluded the musicians, allowing them to channel their varied influences from a place deep within. Amongst the international passengers at the sessions at sea were Sandhya Sanjana (vocals), Katia Moras (vocals), Sudha (vocals), Afra Mussawisade (percussion), Rene Dissel (electric and acoustic basses),
Martin Denev (keyboards), Serigne M. Gueye (bugarabu, djembe), Rasiko (guitar),
David Rothschild (trombone), and Sushi (barking). Yes, barking.
About the album title, Praful, the German-born citizen of the world said, "I found the title to be fitting because backyards are casual places often cluttered with people's belongings, while the pyramid stands for something deeper and spiritual. It is a symbol for a place inside us all, but we don't always connect to it. That's just like my music. It's casual and you can just hang out and have fun, but there is a deeper meaning to the music if you tune into it."
Debuting with the autumn 2003 album release, One Day Deep,
Praful found himself in the Top 10 on three Billboard charts: Electronic, Hot Club and Contemporary Jazz. Although he admits he never even heard the term "smooth jazz" in Europe, the lead single from the CD, "Sigh," took
Praful to No 1 on
Radio & Records' smooth jazz airplay chart and went Top 10 on the college radio electronic chart. The song helped spur the formation of the new "chill" radio format, now spinning off from smooth jazz radio. However you describe it, Praful's sound is audacious and inventive.
To support Pyramid In Your Backyard,
Praful will spend the summer on a major U.S. concert tour with sax star Dave Koz, guitarist Marc Antoine, and R&B vocalist Jeffrey Osborne. Koz is co-founder of Rendezvous Entertainment, which releases Praful's records in the U.S.
