When musicians decide to release outtakes, alternate takes, and remixes, they usually appear on reissues or compilations. Usually, they are curiosities for hardcore fans only. It is quite rare, however, that we are offered recordings of rehearsals and jams preceding the formal process of recording. Sarathy Korwar's digital-only KAL (Real World) is such a document. Its eight selections were recorded live in informal jam sessions at Real World Studios in August 2020, during the first real break in the pandemic lockdowns in the U.K. These are the same musicians that worked with Korwar to deliver the charting, Photay-produced Kalak in early 2023: Tamar Osborn on saxophones and flute, synthesists/electronicists Al MacSween and Danalogue (Dan Leavers), percussionist Magnus Mehta, and Korwar on drums, tablas, percussion, and electronics. Korwar came to the studio armed only with the symbol that adorns the cover of Kalak, and discussed the workings of the Kalak rhythm with the intention to "imprint this knowledge in the back of everyone's head so it played out subliminally during our recordings. Apart from this, the session was fully improvised."

Like the studio sessions, these jams are sinuous, gapless; one set of rhythmic motifs emerges organically from another. The nine-plus-minute opener, "A Seed Comes from a Plant," is a stellar case in point. It fades in with sparse layers of percussion from tablas, chimes, and other drums; at a minute in, windswept synths caress the drums. Then Osborn enters with a fragmental, singsong, four-note vamp as percussion and electronics morph dynamically. Contemporary jazz keyboards offer a statement before the proceedings travel into abstracted atmospheres until seven minutes in, when EDM and funky fusion come to the fore. "These Are the Originals" commences from ether as Osborn's baritone sax improvises, burbles, and bleats with over-syncopated percussion, distorted electronics, and dark, murky atmospherics. "Heard After the Songs They Became" begins as spaced-out jazz-house, with wafting electronics, gated percussion, and spectral synths. The organic, near-junglist rhythm tracks kick in full tilt, highlighted by reverbed snare and deep-toned synth. "People or Songs" approaches the sound of Tangerine Dream during their sequencer era -- at least until Osborn begins inserting sax lines to dialogue with a trap kit and synth bassline. As the pulsing keyboard patterns evolve, so do the rhythms, highlighting, countering, and building on one another. Closer "Songs or People" is the set's single; a mirror image of its predecessor, it employs only the circular synth pattern from it and layers driving organic percussion over, under, and around it with increasing waves of intensity. A sequenced synth dramatically engages distorted baritone sax, hypnotic tom-toms, and tablas. It climaxes in a bust of clashing traditions drawn from Indian and Middle Eastern classical and modal music. While much looser and rawer than Kalak, KAL (Real World) is quite compelling as an aural overview of the creative process and improvisational prowess of this exceptional cast composed of some of the U.K.'s finest musicians.

-- Thom Jurek (allmusic.com)