'Rahmania'

FolkWorld, Sept 2002

The Bollywood Brass Band is one of those bands I would never have discovered if I had not bumped into them at the Rudolstadt Folk Festival. The Bollywood Brass Band plays Indian film music, a label which would sound to me quite boring, as I am generally neither into Indian nor into film music. The BBB are different to what I would expect - this is intelligent, lively, powerful and innovative music, easily accessible also for the European ear. And the history of the band shows that the band members themselves were surprised to find they would become an Indian wedding brass band...
Brass bands have in today's Indian culture a central role, especially playing for weddings, with a repertoire based on Bollywood music, film music of the Bollywood Indian films.
The BBB combines the talents of 11, mainly English rooted, musicians, eight of them playing brass instruments (saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tuba, sousaphone, flugelhorn), added by three percussionists. In live this band is a unique experience, full of energy and passion. This second album of the band presents this live feeling rather well, also this CD is full of energy, talent and happiness. The music focusses on the works of the Indian film music composer A.R. Rahman, and his style combines diverse music styles, such as World Music, Jazz, Brass Band, Film music, and much more. The BBB interpretations of his works make exciting and varied listening.
Additionally to their usual music that they play in live, the band have added four tracks that act more as 20 minutes of bonus tracks. For those numbers, they asked famous UK remixers and Club DJs (Transglobal Underground; Kamel Nitrate; Groove Road) to create remixes of four tracks from the CD. I prefer the pure BBB sound, although I am sure that these collaborations might open the band doors to even wider audiences.
If you like Brass based folk and world music, you should give the Bollywood Brass Band a try.
This is a magnificent and impressive album.

Michael Moll