Ultimate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Vol. 2 CD

Volume two in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Ultimate Collection on the French EMI label not only picks up where volume one left off, but is musically more confident, even further reaching, and seems to take far more chances with very traditional q'waali material. This is Sufi music at its most ecstatic, and is reminiscent of the recordings that appeared later in his life but not the same. This stuff is rawer, far more immediate, and contains no production gloss to make Nusrat sounds palatable to Western audiences. There are six numbers spread over two discs here. All of them are extremely long, and all of them are very intense -- not so much in a way that you have to think about them, because the point is not to think at all, just hear. It doesn't matter what the singer is letting come from his mouth. He is praising the glory of his God in ecstatic terms, in ways that express the most intimate and intense love and devotion. It is at times melodic, and at other times merely off the grid. Like its predecessor, this package contains extra multimedia on each disc for viewing and interacting on your computer. For fans of the later music Nusrat issued, this will be a revelation. If you've only heard about him from your heroes like Jeff Buckley or Eddie Vedder, it's high time you scoped out this music for yourselves because these are the records they heard that blew them away. ~ Thom Jurek

Just like Volume 1, Ultimate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Vol. 2 is a fantastic collection of Pakistani recordings, this time recorded in 1983 and 1984. At the time, Nusrat was a giant in Pakistan, but his star had yet to rise in the West. The main difference between this and Volume 1 is additional instrumentation on a few tracks. Of course there's harmonium, tabla, handclapping and vocals to which qanoun is added on one track, but there is also what sounds like clarinet and sarod on a couple others. But that's just the supporting cast, the main attraction here is the soaring, ecstatic voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. As with Volume 1, the choices here are somewhat arbitrary, but it's all well-recorded and exquisitely performed qawwali music. A bit more annotation as to recording specifics and sources would have been nice, but this is another excellent set of Nusrat's pure qawwali. ~ Sean Westergaard

Liner Note Authors: Jacques Denis; Jacques Denis.

Recording information: 1983-1984.

Translator: Mary Criswick.Mojo (Publisher) (p.112) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[L]isten to the slow build of 'Haq Ali Ali Moula Ali' and the soul in his voice throughout; having it all could only enhance your life."