Bombay Dub Orchestra

The Bombay Dub Orchestra brings together a world of musical influences which fuses electronic, ambient, western classical, Indian classical, semi-classical, and other sounds from around the globe. It all began some seven years ago when producer Garry Hughes and string arranger/composer Andrew T. Mackay, went to India to record some of that city's top session players for a project by the London based Indian duo Spellbound.

It all began some seven years ago when producer Garry Hughes and string arranger/composer Andrew T. Mackay, went to India to record some of that city's top session players for a project by the London based Indian duo Spellbound.

Their debut self-titled album features over 50 musicians including a 30 piece string orchestra based in Bombay, India. Hughes and Mackay have worked with the Bombay based musicians for the last seven years and this their debut album brings together a passionate and cinematic view of the world.


Bombay Dub Orchestra
Welcome to a world of cinematic lushness, orchestral delights, global voices, rhythms, vintage synthesizers and electronic bleeps. This is Bombay Dub Orchestra ? the remarkable debut album from the U.K.-based duo of Garry Hughes (Bj?rk, Sly & Robbie) and Andrew T. Mackay (VAST, Annie Leibovitz). Bombay Dub Orchestra is music that will stroke the senses and enamour the soul, with its uniquely brilliant crossover of orchestral arrangements, modern, lush beats and synthesizers and a heavy slant to the music of India.

That territory has been mapped by bands like R?yksopp, Air and Zero 7, but no one had dragged a 28-piece Indian string section into the arena before. And while the name "Bombay Dub Orchestra" conjures up visions of the garish pop of Bollywood's song-and-dance numbers, or the reverb-drenched, proto-psychedelic sounds of Jamaican dub, this music creates and sustains a very different mood.

It all began some seven years ago when producer Garry Hughes and string arranger/composer Andrew T. Mackay, went to India to record some of that city's top session players for a project by the London-based Indian duo Spellbound.

"I produced and Andrew arranged," Hughes recalls. "It was a fantastic experience recording these guys, and on the plane coming home we thought how great it would be to make an orchestral chill-out record with these players."

This was easier said than done, since both Mackay and Hughes had other irons in the fire. Andrew T. Mackay, who is classically trained and is a descendant of one Luciano Francesco Paggi, "the Italian flautist, painter and revolutionary," has a busy career writing music for films, television, and artists as diverse as photographers Annie Liebovitz and Herb Ritts and the late actor Peter Cushing as well as arranging string orchestras for the likes of L.A. rockers VAST and '80s legends ABC.

Garry Hughes, who claims to be a direct descendant of "a long line of horse thieves," had gigs as a keyboardist and producer with artists like Bj?rk, Sly and Robbie, Garbage, The Pink Floyd Orchestral Project, and The Art of Noise. When they finally had a chance to work on their long-delayed idea, the goal, according to Hughes, was simple: "to explore music that no one else had so far done." ?Courtesy Calabash Music