YOU will likely never hear better acoustic slide playing than this. Debashish Bhattacharya played his first slide-guitar concert at age four and went on to become the most prominent student of Hindustani classical slide guitar originator Brij Bhushan Kabra. On this recording Bhattacharya performs a light classical piece and two ragas on three different guitars of his own making. 

The Anandi is a tiny, uke-sized soprano guitar that sings on a joyous, short piece derived from raga Shiva Ranjani. The Chaturangui is a guitar with 22 strings (most of which are resonating strings) that dips down into the baritone range during Bhattacharya's superhuman sliding on Raga Basant Mukhari. And the 14-stringed Gandharvi fits in between, able to imitate the sounds of many other stringed instruments, both bowed and plucked. Bhattacharya uses a variety of tunings on these instruments, and through his innovative slide ornamentations he can create dozens of different notes with one pick stroke on a single string. Conversely, one note can be kaleidoscopically fractured in the hall of mirrors of his complex finger picking. Using the centuries-old raga tradition, Bhattacharya takes the listener to a place of deep emotional expression beyond the boundaries of time.