Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party - Chain Of Light

Chain Of Light is a posthumous studio album by Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party, released in September 2024 via Real World Records.

Chain of Light is an album of previously unheard recordings of the singer and his qawwal party made at Real World Studios in 1990, whilst he was at the height of his vocal capabilities.

Carefully restored from the original analogue tapes, this ‘lost album’ of traditional qawwals includes a pristine recording of the much-loved classic ‘Ya Allah Ya Rehman’, as well the only known performance of ‘Ya Gaus Ya Meeran’.

The recording was made at Real World Studios in April 1990, during the same time he worked on Mustt Mustt, his seminal crossover album with Canadian producer Michael Brook.

“There is an amazing clarity to these performances,” producer Michael Brook says of the recordings. “They are more harmonically adventurous than the other songs that Nusrat was recording at the time and the whole group is firing on all cylinders.”

Descended from a 600-year-old lineage of qawwali singers, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice has been singularly responsible for spreading the devotional music of Sufism to the world, ever since he became the leader of his family’s musical group in 1971. At turns heavy and hulkingly powerful, yet agile and pointedly precise, his vocal not only embodies the tradition of the Sufi qawwali but it is the emotive essence of singing itself.

Over the course of his musical career, Khan became a cultural icon whose list of esteemed fans extended well beyond the Islamic world and into the realm of western rock and pop. The late Jeff Buckley famously said of the singer “He’s my Elvis” and Khan counted amongst his fans The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. His voice also appeared on the soundtrack of movies by Hollywood directors Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Tim Robbins.

Khan’s relationship with Peter Gabriel and Real World Records began after his watershed performance at the 1985 WOMAD festival, which was the first time he performed to a predominantly western audience. Shortly after that historic festival set he was signed to the label, and his international profile rose through a collaboration on Gabriel’s 1989 album Passion which featured in the movie The Last Temptation of Christ.

“I’ve had the privilege to work with a tonne of different musicians from all over the world in my time, but perhaps the greatest singer of them all was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,” says Peter Gabriel. “What he could do and make you feel with his voice was quite extraordinary and we were very proud to have played a role in getting him to a much wider global audience. It was a real delight when we found out this tape had been in our library. This album really shows him at his peak. It’s a wonderful record.”

This album is a deluxe edition on black vinyl housed in a single pocket sleeve with square deboss and gold foil lettering with an 8 page booklet printed on offset paper and download, pressed in Europe via Real World.