Louis Banks, also known as Dambar Bahadur Budaprithi, is an Indian jazz pianist who has worked with John McLaughlin and other big names in jazz/fusion. He formed the band Sangam with Ramesh Shotham, percussionist and a group of musicians at the Karnataka College of Percussion in the early 1980s. Their goal was to mix jazz-rock fusion with Indian traditional music. They traveled to Europe and formed a partnership with Embryo. Shotham, the composer of all Sangam’s music, would continue playing with them throughout the 80s. Although the group didn’t last long, their album, recorded in Munich by Christian Burchard and co-produced with him, is a wonderful piece of jazz-rock/ethnic-fusion. Despite its remarkable lineage, it remains surprisingly unknown. The first side features a long, almost side-long track that reaches a frenetic level of intensity that will make your head spin. The mood changes and things calm down, but the quality remains high. The strange thing about this album is that there are two versions. The first album was released by Eigelstein, a small German label. It was called “Jazz Yatra Sextet”. CBS followed less than one year later. Track orders and track lengths are different. However, the recordings seem almost identical. from http://cdreissuewishlist.blogspot.com
