Island didn’t even freak out when I told them the first single, Traveller, would be more than 11 minutes long. I wanted it to sound like a journey, like classical music has movements. Island Records let me get on with it and didn’t hear OK until it was finished. Staring at the computer waiting for the music to appear felt very futuristic. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto sent his parts from New York over the internet – which was a new thing back then. Making the album took nine months of travelling around and recording everyone from London MCs to folk singers on Okinawa Island, as well as the Madras Philharmonic Orchestra in India. I’d heard that when second world war pilots came back from missions alive, they were listed as 'OK' At my club night, I played Indian classical, tabla, jazz, hip-hop, electro and drum’n’bass. I dyed my hair blue and went on tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees, then arranged the strings on Björk’s album Debut. "Light," a truly wondrous fusion of Indian flute and rich atmospherics, encapsulates what Singh is all about and should convince even the most skeptical.My parents had wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer, but I was coming home at 3am with armfuls of drums. Singh's subtle craftsmanship in fitting the old with the modern make this album seductive and one of the best efforts yet at blending Asian sounds with techno. There's also Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan-like devotional qawwali and traditional Okinawan dance music mixed in to make OK truly pan-Asian. It is mostly a reinterpretation of hypnotic Indian classical music with plenty of flute, sitar, and of course tabla. The title was chosen because of the universality of the word OK, which can be understood almost anywhere. OK is Singh's debut release, and it was nine months in the making. That experience led to the release of the album Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Underground, a highly regarded sampling of Asian-esque sounds from artists who performed at Anokha. Talvin Singh first rose to notoriety running a popular Monday night London club, Anokha.
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