Talvin Singh is one of the creators of Asian Underground. Born in London, he travelled to India aged 16 to study classical Indian music, by 25 he had created a new genre of music and is on the verge of another studio album and a tour to Australia.

With a new album on the way Talvin is the first to confess that it’s a little bit different. The album is, by his admission, more song based and tells some what of a story. “I have done so many tracks in the past and have heaps of archives which I will probably release later. But I still have this romantic idea that an album should be a particular time and emotion which transcends everything and transforms into musical mode.”

Explaining his new album like a story or a book, he feels it’s something that takes you on a journey yet doesn’t necessarily have a narrative. “I think the narrative lies within the mysticism of the emotion and sensibility. I think the narrative [of my album] is pretty open. Music is like the interruption of something much wider, it’s much less stipulated. If I’m doing a song with the Indian language I like to also make it accessible so that even if you don’t understand the langue you would get a sense of what the song was about just by the musical mode and the sensibility.”

It has been some time since Talvin Singh’s last album. His most recent recording was a live commission in Paris two years ago, set and recorded in a beautiful cathedral with a big band. While Talvin admits that it had amazing ambience, they did rehearse for two months. “That was a pretty special project but things have also changed musically a lot. The time gap for listening to an album is much smaller and everyone is downloading. We have gone back into cassette days where some people say that MP3s don’t sound good, but neither did cassettes. But it’s cheap and made people listen to a lot of music, and people are listening to more music than ever because one has less time, so on their travels everyone has some kind of digital device which can play music. There is more and more people listening to different types of music by purchase or swapping.”

While record companies might be at a point where they are saying music is not selling anymore, Talvin believes this is extremely negative because more people are listening to music and so for him it’s a good time to start putting out new material. “There has been sabbatical periods over my recording career, but in winter I live in India so I have been spending more times doing other things. Spending time with my guru and playing more classical concerts, that’s what’s really nutritious to me and feeds me.”

As one of the founders of the genre known as ‘Asian Underground’, Talvin Singh still feels some connection to the scene. “It’s been a long time that I have been making that style of music but there is a side of me that has moved on, but for me challenges are always good. If I want to make a particular piece of music that, in the past would have taken me 20 minutes or half an hour, now I can I can do it in 2 minutes, so that’s a bit less challenging.”

Talvin does believe that both Asian Underground and world music still have a future, especially with him “You can definitely refine that same genre and make it much better and take it on another level, but again that’s open to perception and I think even with this record I have done that, but with music, at the end of the day, you have to be into what you are doing. Music tells the truth and you can’t lie. There have been times when I have tried to convince myself and haven’t been able to, so I haven’t been able to convince people around me and they are really frustrating times. I really care about what I do and in the sooner times – in the coming period – people are going to be hearing more and more music coming out of Mr Singh.”

Talvin Singh plays selected DJ dates in Australia this December:

Dec 2 – Factory Theatre, Sydney
Dec 3 – Rocket Bar, Adelaide
Dec 7 – Prince Bandroom, Melbourne