Chapter III: We Return to Light

Album review

Sitar player Anoushka Shankar brings her triptych to a close with this final, light-bathed chapter, after Chapter I: Forever, For Now (2023) and Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dark (2024). With six tracks clocking in at just 25 minutes, Chapter III: We Return to Light passes by quickly, but it’s easy to listen to this record over and over again. Through the careful use of infinite loops composed alongside sitarist Alam Khan and percussionist Swarthy Korwar, the melodies quickly weave their way into the furthermost corners of our minds and souls. After the soft and slower paced opening tracks (“Daybreak” and “Hiraeth”), the percussion and high notes of “Dancing on the Scorched Earth” and “We Burn So Brightly” help to pick up the pace, accelerating us into a trance. This madness dissipates, however, by the album’s end, with the lighter “Amrita” and “We Return to Love” shifting our attention to the string instruments instead. 

Tradition serves as the foundation for a more ambient, minimal sound on these three albums, and although this final chapter holds its own, they seem to serve a larger purpose when listened to all together. The English-Indian sitarist envisioned them as three distinct geographies, drawing from her roots and memories in order to combine them with those of her collaborators. After all, it’s important to keep in mind that Nils Frahm played the organ, glass harmonica and piano on the series’ first installment produced by Arrow Aftab, and that the second was written as a quintet. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz