The track draws its bones from Raag Jaunpuri, a late-morning raga that carries within it a particular quality of longing — not the melodramatic variety, but the deeper, quieter kind, the sort that surfaces when one is alone with clear light and honest thought. Eisenkramer, who has spent years touring India as the only North American performer of his instrument to do so regularly, does not approach this material as an outsider paying respectful tribute. He inhabits it. The slide work is fluid yet deliberate, each phrase shaped with the patience of a man who understands that a note held a half-second longer than expected can carry more emotional freight than a dozen notes played in haste.

But *Reminder* is not a solo performance, and its true revelation lies in the partnership at its heart. Jasdeep Singh, who carries the title Shahzada-e-Jori — Prince of Jori — among the most distinguished practitioners of his field, brings the jori drum into conversation with Eisenkramer's guitar in a manner that feels less like accompaniment and more like a sustained philosophical argument between two remarkably disciplined minds. The jori, that rare and thunderous cousin of the tabla, rooted in Sikh devotional practice and the ancient dhrupad tradition, produces a sound that sits somewhere between a heartbeat and a weather event. Singh's rolling patterns do not merely underpin the melody — they interrogate it, respond to it, occasionally push back against it with the gentle insistence of someone who has something important to add and knows precisely when to add it.

This is the first recorded collaboration of Hindustani slide guitar and jori, a fact worth dwelling upon. Musical history is littered with firsts that are merely technical achievements — two sounds placed side by side because no one had thought to do it before. This is emphatically not one of those. Eisenkramer and Singh play together as though these two instruments have been in silent conversation across centuries of separate development and have finally, through some unlikely concatenation of social media and global pandemic and mutual artistic seriousness, been given the chance to speak openly. The result has the warmth of recognition rather than the novelty of experiment.

The original 2021 recording has been remastered for Eisenkramer's 2025 album *CARDINAL*, and the sonic improvement is audible — the jori in particular gains a physical presence in the mix that rewards listening through decent speakers or headphones with the volume set honestly high. The low-end resonance of Singh's drumming becomes almost tactile.

The title carries its own weight. Eisenkramer has spoken of the song as a message that strength is forged through resistance, that struggle is not an obstacle to worthwhile endeavour but its very medium. This is not a new thought, but *Reminder* does not peddle the idea cheaply. The music earns its thesis through demonstration rather than assertion. You feel, in the tension between guitar and drum, in the push and release of the raga's phrasing, something of what productive resistance actually sounds like when rendered in sound — not comfortable, not decorative, but genuinely necessary.

For British listeners whose engagement with Indian classical music extends no further than the ambient end of the world music shelf, *Reminder* offers an entry point that asks nothing of its audience except willingness. It does not simplify or domesticate its source traditions; it presents them with full seriousness and trusts the listener to meet that seriousness halfway. Eisenkramer and Singh are artists of considerable accomplishment, and they play like it, which is rarer than it ought to be.

Essential.