Within the spring of 2020, locked down in his New York residence, Ali Sethi determined to show his Instagram right into a digital rehearsal house. On the identical time day by day, the Pakistani American singer and composer would sit down together with his harmonium and tanpura, hit Instagram’s “Dwell” button, and spend an hour in freewheeling musical observe. He’d riff on Hindustani classical ragas, carry out playful covers of South Asian classics, invite musician buddies to go online and jam with him. It was throughout these periods that he first started experimenting with spliced loops from Nicolás Jaar’s 2020 album Telas, improvising alaps over the Chilean American producer’s Stygian ambient soundscapes. When a mutual buddy shared a recording of considered one of these experiments with Jaar, the producer reached out to Sethi by way of e-mail. That kicked off a dialog that continues on their collaborative album Intiha, which options Sethi singing Urdu ghazals over re-worked loops from Telas, in addition to new improvised sections courtesy of Jaar.

On paper, the 2 appear unlikely collaborators. Sethi is finest identified for his experiments with the ghazal, a poetic-musical kind that’s the South Asian analog of the blues, with Sufi non secular renegades singing songs steeped in metaphysical pathos. He could annoy Hindustani classical purists together with his improvements—ragas re-imagined for piano accompaniment, Punjabi folks blended with synth-laden indie rock—however his music hardly ever strays removed from mainstream-adjacent sounds. His 2022 breakthrough hit “Pasoori,” a collaboration with Pakistani singer Shae Gill, melds Punjabi folks, Turkish strings, and reggaeton beats into an exhilarating romantic banger that might match seamlessly on any Spotify pop playlist.

Jaar’s music, alternatively, appears to drag away from something so clearly typical or recognizable. Since breaking out with the minimalist techno of 2011’s House Is Solely Noise, he has pushed ever additional into ambient abstraction. Even Towards All Logic—his most accessible, dancefloor-friendly facet challenge—bristles with harsh noise and gritty industrial textures. His solo work, significantly on Telas, resembles a primordial universe, swirling clouds of nebulous sound coming collectively and drifting aside in accordance with arcane bodily legal guidelines.

But in some way, possibly as a result of each their practices are so deeply rooted in improvisation and recontextualisation, the assembly of those vastly divergent musical worlds isn’t as jarring as you would possibly count on. When Sethi first despatched Jaar voice notes together with his vocal improvisations, Jaar realized that “it was what Telas had been lacking.” Maybe that’s why the document is named Intiha. The phrase interprets as “restrict” however may seek advice from the purpose of “termination.” Having already launched Telas in each “stable” (the four-track album) and “liquid” (an interactive web site that allowed customers to recombine the document’s sounds) configurations, Jaar could also be signaling that that is the piece’s remaining, definitive kind.