Khan, Ashraf Sharif & Vik

Sufi Dub Brothers Khan, Ashraf Sharif & Vik

The swing of Ashraf Sharif Khan and Viktor Marek is performed live with their Beats, Bass and Sitar, leaving behind rows of earthlings* with their mouths wide open (grinning) - and just as open soles (dancing). Their album "Sufi Dub Brothers" is a testimony to this decree of comet-like fate and gathers nearly the complete recorded song material of this musical sensation.

An elusive "Sufistep" (Viktor Marek) somewhere between HipHop, Acid, Electro and Dub meets a masterful Sitar performance (Ashraf Sharif Khan). The two of them took more than 10 years of time in the Hamburg Ebbe-Road-Studios to find a suitable sonic space for this album. A long way, after all they transform South Asian classical music into western club music - and not vice versa. Except in the song "Maschinenland" which is a cover version of a song originally performed by the German group Abwärts.

Ashraf Sharif Khan, born in Lahore, Pakistan, is the son of sitar master Ustad Muhammad Sharif Khan Poonchwala, at times just as famous in India and Pakistan as Ustad Vilayat Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Like his father and grandfather before him, he belongs to the Poonch Gharana Sitar tradition. He is a member of the Pakistani Music Hall Of Fame.

Viktor Marek is an outernational superstar. His sensitivity is also evident in his ongoing collaborations with Jacques Palminger or Knarf Rellöm and in spontaneous encounters with, for example, Felix Kubin, Jamie Lidell or Anthony "Shake" Shakir. In the early nineties Marek and his trio 8Doogymoto released on Matthew Herbert's label soundslike and travelled the world. With no other project before, Viktor Marek has come as close to his musical core as in his recent work with Ashraf Sharif Khan.