US-based Pakistani artist and singer/songwriter, Zeerak Ahmed—who performs under the stage name Slowspin—returns with her highly anticipated album titled, TALISMAN.

Co-produced with Grey Mcmurray, the TALISMAN delivers a sound beyond boundaries and/or genres. Mcmurray, who is revered for his intuitive musicality, eloquently narrates enchanting as well as feverish scenes. Through his chord washes and poignant rests between notes, he effortlessly holds space for Slowspin’s lilting arrangements that recall the journey to the divine. The album is a unique blend of North Indian classical vocal traditions, lush textures akin to shoegaze, psychedelic-rock, folk, ambient and experimental music; collectively it composes the spatial richness and complexity of the contemporary South Asian voice.

The TALISMAN was born from an improv session with the inimitable Shahzad Ismaily (Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Arooj Aftaab, Love in Exile), Grey Mcmurray (Gil Scott-Heron, Tongues in Trees trio, Beth Orthon, Ali Sethi), Aaron Roche (Kjartan Sveinsson, JFDR, Sam Amidon) and Greg Fox (Liturgy, Z’s) at Figure 8 Recording studio in Brooklyn. Three days of boundless explorations with Slowspin singing to her finger plucked guitar, Ismaily on bass, Roche on acoustic guitar, Mcmurray on electric and Fox on drums, grew into three years of pandemic production. In quarantine’s solitude, Slowspin and Grey Mcmurray dove into the myriad of immediate and ancestral memories, which birthed a collage of melodies expressing the tenderness of home, the lover’s voyage and desire for oneness. Through words, vowels and howls in Slowspin’s mother tongue(s)—Urdu, Farsi, Purbi and English—uncanny and heart wrenching refrains build new soundscapes. With the addition of sublime contributions from Alison Shearer (flute), Rich Hinman (pedal steel), Eve Lawitts (double bass), Adriana Molello (violin) and Michael Beharie (acoustic guitar, bass, synth), you find yourself transfixed by mellifluous vocals, deep pulsing rhythms and atmospheric washes set against textural provocations of celestial flute and harmonic strings.

Slowspin describes the TALISMAN as a tightly woven amulet made from devotional expressions. She says it is “braided from the metallic threads of the ecstasy of my highest loves, the smokey whispers of my deepest, quietest losses, and the over pouring rivers of my loudest calls. The TALISMAN or طلسم holds the telos: it is an amulet for the journey into the unknown, a balm for the pilgrim traversing the abyss of love, loss and longing.”