Klaus Wiese – Kalengra

Kalengra was one of the first KW albums I encountered on Youtube, and it remains my favorite. Indeed, over the past couple years it has been one of my most frequently-listened-to ambient albums. If one can roughly divide his oeuvre into categories by the prominence of certain timbres and instruments -- singing-bowl-centric vs. keyboard-centric vs. chordophone-centric -- I'd say this falls well into the latter category. Delicious drones from harmonium, singing bowls, tambura, and voices, a little bit of tabla on side 1, and plenty of wonderful zither and harp. The album credits do not list keyboards or synthesizer, which for the most part rings true, save for a chord progression in "Desert Flower" that doesn't sound like any harmonium I've ever heard... I'm certainly no expert in that area though, so who am I to doubt the master's word?

I've recently learned that an alternate version of side 2 ("Desert Flower") exists, perhaps a result of the remix/remaster process for the Umbra release. Both versions of the side have three sections: 1.) harmonium/keyboard chord progression over a drone (also heard with added zither on the album Geisha); 2.) tambura; 3.) zither noodling over a voice/singing bowl/harmonium drone (which was later reused with slight variations on his Dunya album.) Version A (the first one I heard) places the sections in the order above and features the zither very prominently in the mix of section 3. Additionally, the zither playing is texturally relatively busy (comparable to that in the fourth section of "Manonash") and almost immediately introduces gentle dissonances by jumping from the tonic and fifth to 11ths and 13ths.

By contrast, Version B switches the order of sections 1 and 2, which I think detracts from the album listening experience in that it greatly reduces the textural contrast -- instead of the simple, repeated tambura pluckings leading into the full, continuous drone + zither of section 3, we get one continuous drone (+ keyboard chords) leading into another. Also in Version B, the zither in section 3 is much lower in the mix (at times barely audible), and doesn't initially wander as far from the tonic.

For all my nitpicking about the alternate version, it's still a fantastic album either way and well worth checking out!