Life after the hype for Asian `underground' music.

To some observers, Talvin Singh's victory at the 1999 Mercury Music Prize signified the final arrival in the mainstream of one of the UK's seemingly buoyant underground scenes. To those actually involved in new Asian-based music at the grassroots, however, it was a double-edged sword. Not only did it revive publicity for a "scene" that did not really exist in a neatly-packageable form, but it came at a time when many of the pioneering lights had actually started to expand beyond it.

This does not necessarily make it easy for some of those artists previously lumped together who now happen to be poised to return with new albums in the coming months. For example Ha, the follow-up album by Singh, recently appeared to little fanfare, charting at 57 last month and exiting the albums list shortly after. Meanwhile, Asian Dub Foundation were one of the casualties in the merger of London Records and WEA and are now back with Nation Records, which is poised to release their album Frontline 93-97 at the end of this month.

Still set to blaze new trails of their own are the likes of Outcaste artists Badmarsh & Shri, who release their second album Signs on May 28, and former labelmate Nitin Sawhney, who is now signed to V2 and is preparing to release the follow-up to his own Mercury-shortlisted album Beyond Skin on June 18.

Both records push new musical boundaries not only in their choice of collaborators but in their individual takes on the personal experiences of the artists involved. Conceived in a headspace somewhere between Bombay and the East End, Badmarsh & Shri's Signs follows a path that the pair first trod on their 1997 debut Dancing Drums. "I don't believe the Asian Underground scene ever really existed," says Shri, who himself spent five years "getting to know the British music scene" playing under the wing of Sawhney.

"It should have been a movement but we were all in our own camps doing our own thing. I want people to listen to the quality and finesse of our music, not for the fashion. As music has gotten more stylised, people have forgotten to listen to music for music's sake."

The baggage of the Asian underground tag is also something Outcaste Records founder Shabs has ...