The halfway milestone in Sebastian Rochford’s year-long Days And Nights At The Takeaway project was reached with this epic, slowly unravelling piece recorded with acclaimed British Bengali sarod player Soumik Datta (the sarod is a smaller, more portable version of the sitar).

Like Seb, Datta has worked with a wildly diverse range of artists (Beyoncé, Talvin Singh and Bill Bailey look good on the CV) and has worked on a number of film scores including Brick Lane and West Is West.

“‘In Slow City’ is based on a raag called ‘Nat Bhairav’,” says Seb. “For this one I wanted to try something that was more of a live performance. I wanted to keep the piece close to how we played it, in the way it slowly grew, which is why it’s around fifteen minutes long.”

‘In Slow City’ was also reworked by Seb’s Acoustic Ladyland bandmate, bassist Ruth Goller, who transformed the original into a charmingly peculiar Syd Barrett-like song.

“I had a feeling Ruth would make something I would never ever expect,” says Seb, “And I absolutely adore what she did.”

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