Ry Cooder, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - A Meeting By The River (2 LP)

Winner of Best World Music Album in the 1994 Grammy Awards. The illustrated booklet [from the CD edition] contains four pages of notes describing the equipment used for the recording and background on Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt, Bhatt's mohan vina (an instrument he designed himself, featuring twelve sympathetic strings, three melody strings and five drone strings, played -like Cooder's guitar- with a slide), the recording and the circumstances that brought them together. The second drummer, Joachim Cooder, is Ry Cooder's son. NB: In the book that came with the 1993 [i]Trance Europe Express[/i] 2CD compilation, Alex Paterson of The Orb included this release among his top 12 ambient albums of all-time, adding "I only wish we [The Orb] could have produced some of this record. It would be a match made in heaven."