In the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent's musicological realms, veena (or vina) can mean more than one thing. In its generic sense it can be a stringed instrument, whether fretted or unfretted, lute generally but even violin. Or, as here, it can relate to a specific stringed instrument, south India's fretted Saraswati veena. Jayanthi Kumaresh comes from a family steeped in the south's classical system over many a generation. On her mother's side, she has the noted violinist Lalgudi Jayaraman as an uncle and the vainika (veena player) Padmavathy Ananthagopalan, with whom she studied, as an aunt. Plus she studied with S. Balachander, prime contender for the last century's foremost, most influential and most maverick vainika. Maybe that accounts for why Jayanthi Kumaresh has made Mysterious Duality such an audacious album. There are four compositions. Abhishek Raghuram's title piece and ‘Wandering In Dimensions’, R. Kumaresh's ‘Waiting For Dusk’ and her own adaptation of a traditional theme, ‘Strings With No Ends’. She has multi-tracked her parts, layering veena to create almost cinematic, southern sweeps. Her road may be the product of other people's imaginations – the people who put her on the path – but the voice is entirely hers and Jayanthi Kumaresh's is a wholly original voice bridging past and present. Love it to pieces.