Label: Charsur Digital Workstation

Price: Cassette: Rs. 50

Two messages to the producers of the album, Charsur Digital Workstation. First, congratulations, for having brought about the combination of Mandolin Shrinivas and Raga Gamanashramam--which once used to find favour with artistes like MLV, but is now an endangered species.

Second, please take care to give correct technical information about ragas in the inlay card. Gamanashramam is the 53rd raga in the melakartha table.

It has the chatusruthi daivatham, and not the suddha daivatham, as the inlay card says. A minor lapse, but a big mistake. Since most buyers would want to refer to the inlay card for learning about the "rarely heard" raga, the producers should have taken care to give information correctly.

There is one good reason to include the album in the shopping cart and that is its instructive value. Little Master Mandolin Shrinivas has played it rather slowly, developing the raga, swara-by-swara and one gets a good idea of Gamanashramam, listening to him. Likewise, the pallavi streams into a ragamalika with Ananda Bhairavi, Garudadhwani and Samudrapriya. The latter two are veritably rare ragas.

CDW says it would like to build a repertoire of 25 albums this year "including thematic titles in classical, semi classical and world music". The company should change the way it packages the cassettes. The thin paper holder comes off rather easily, making the cassette 'homeless', which can be quite exasperating for a fastidious connoisseur of music.