During his WOMADelaide DJ set, Talvin Singh, partially immersed in a cloud of hazy smoke and aqua-blue lighting, moves his head slowly towards the microphone mounted above his mixer. His face is covered by a baseball cap and flowing black hair. With almost an essence of divinity in his voice, Singh proclaims to the Adelaide crowd, “this music has no boundaries.” An overwhelming array of Eastern string sections and percussion and most notably Singh’s renowned Tabla, swirl intricately in the fresh wind until magically interwoven- as if making love to form one enormous breakdown before falling back into the complex patterns of a drum machine. The crowd is completely under his spell.

Only a couple of hours earlier, I sat nervously in the media hub at WOMADelaide in Adelaide’s Botanic Park with Talvin, my noticeable fidgeting all too obvious to those walking in and out before the interview. For someone who has worked with artists as distinguished as Indigo Girls, David Sylvian, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Sun Ra, Björk, Massive Attack and the Future Sound of London, Singh is a surprisingly modest man; comforting me by explaining that “he should be the one who his nervous.” As a guest of the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, WOMADelaide was the first of three very different performances scheduled in the week just past.

This is the first time Singh has taken his now renowned Tabtek show to Australian shores, and he describes it as his “own little multimedia band.” Set against a backdrop of visuals by Japanese projection artist Soichi Matsumoto (Soi for short), Singh plays live tabla, handsonic and keyboards, whilst Oscar Vizan operates the Mac, keyboard and effects unit. A fusion of Eastern sounds, broken beats, drum and bass, minimal electronica and house, Singh explains that the project evolved “after seven years of electronic tabla playing- with a lot of the instruments running through a number of different effects.” He also emphasizes the fact that the influences that have shaped his current sound come from more than one culture.

“There’s a lot of Eastern landscape to my music,” tells Singh, slanting back into his chair, “I’m taking a lot of influence from India at the moment. It’s a very cultured environment, and it’s still very progressive there.” Talvin has been living in India for the last four years. “I grew up in London and I kind of see this revolving cycle in music everywhere in western culture, and that’s not happening in India because there is so much space to grow. I’m carrying my Indian mobile phone, and I’ll get two to three text messages a day from someone about amazing electronica work, or art exhibitions that are going on there.”

“On the flip side, a lot of minimal electronica has found its way into my sound, because I believe it’s really taken a different shape to other musical genres of present. It’s expressing landscapes in a way I’ve never heard before.” Singh states that he obviously doesn’t like all of it, but “takes the good bits from it,” reinforcing the point that the German sound has had a profound influence on his work, along with visuals he has set his eyes upon whilst traveling the globe. Apart from wowing audiences with his Tabtek shows, Singh recently completed a re-production of a Sarah Mclachlan piece, Answer, which he personally found very moving.

“I just had the voice to work with, and if you listen to it, I think it’s a lot more involved and personal, and not detached, much like what remixes become. If you feel a certain closeness with someone, even though you’ve never met them personally, but have been touched by their music, you feel something more.” This ‘re-production,’ not ‘remix’ aspect of his work, has had profound influence on his recently completed album, due for release in the near future. Much of this was displayed at WOMADelaide, and Talvin explains that even more will be revealed at his Tabtek performance.

“The picture is very different this time,” tells Singh with a certain philosophical and abstract tone. “Before I was using a lot of distant voices in my music. This time around the figure in the painting is much bigger. The vocals are really loud and upfront, and the music is used more to accompany this.”

Amongst the saturation of world influences, even Australia has had some sort of effect on Singh after teaching percussion to classical students in Melbourne. “It’s really hard to teach the Tabla in just 3 hours,” laughs Singh, “even to classical students, but one of the things that really interested and excited me though was their enthusiasm… in involving themselves with confrontation with the spiritual and cultural significance of the instrument.” Singh sees this as a very positive sign for future generations of music, in that this enables artists to break down the cultural boundaries and progress forwards into new and exciting territory. “I think that the interesting music of today is what lies between two or three different countries, and that’s what I’m trying to do with my music.”

Talvin’s show Tabtek played last night to a standing ovation at Adelaide’s Thebarton Theatre, following a surprise DJ set at the Persian Gardens on Thursday night. Look out for Singh’s new album and WOMADelaide reviews coming soon to ITM.