Globally acclaimed sitar player, producer, composer and nine-time-Grammy-nominee Anoushka Shankar has announced a new mini-album Chapter I: Forever, For Now, which will be released on Nils Frahm’s LEITER label on October 6th 2023. Shankar’s first new music since December 2022’s standalone single ‘In Her Name’, the mini album also follows Between Us..., her live album for LEITER earlier the same year. The album’s lead single is ‘Stolen Moments’, which will be made available digitally from June 30th.
Recorded at LEITER’s studio in Berlin’s celebrated Funkhaus complex, the four new tracks make up the first chapter in a trilogy of mini-albums Shankar will be writing and releasing as an evolving story between tours. Featuring guest appearances by Nils Frahm (piano, glass harmonica, harmonium, slit drum), Gal Maestro (bass) and Magda Giannikou (accordion), Forever, For Now was produced by Arooj Aftab, with whom Shankar had previously collaborated on ‘Udhero Na’, from the deluxe edition of Aftab’s ‘Vulture Prince’ album.
This, too, was nominated for a 2023 Grammy, this time for Best Global Music Performance – bringing to nine Shankar's tally of Grammy nominations to date – and their creative reunion for Chapter I proved especially liberating. “I wanted recordings that express moments,” the sitarist says, “not my analysis of those moments from a future vantage point, which often happens when working on albums over a longer period.”
Right from the outset, Shankar’s intention over the three releases was to work with a different producer on each mini-album, and Aftab was an obvious candidate for these inaugural sessions. “I’d always thought she was brilliant,” Shankar recalls. “and working together on ‘Udhero Na' confirmed our collaborative chemistry. I love the genre-fluid world she creates with thoughtful arrangements and sonic spaces. It’s something I also value in my own work, but she does it differently. I was really drawn to that different voice, that different colour.”
