ALBUM REVIEW: Tashi Dorji – we will be wherever the fires are lit

Drag City

Released: 22.11.24

Tashi Dorji makes experimental music – like, real experimental music. Not just genre-hopping catchy tunes with a slight edge. He sits down in front of a recorder for five minutes at a time, strumming on his acoustic guitar in whatever way feels right to him on that day.

The Bhutanese-American’s approach is inherently political in an inversion of the expected and a reclamation of an instrument whose history, now firmly embedded in European and American culture, originates in the Indian subcontinent. The resultant tracks meander along like a walk down a different path in a neighbourhood you know well. There are sprinkles of recognisable traits of traditional songs, but they’re fleeting. we will be wherever the fires are lit [sic] is deliberately abstract, and enjoyably so.