23.04.20

Artist Review

Weyes Blood

Album Review

Nouvelle Ambiance !!!: Sounds from the Pan-African Paris Underground

I'm moving my body in ways I couldn't imagine during 4 months of seemingly preventable indolence where I spent most of my time inside my room in my hometown, churning out marginally average work to meet submission deadlines for an online architecture semester. After a brief re-surface to another city, I find myself, reluctantly but wittingly, back in the same spot, with an agenda to finish my undergraduate studies once and for all.

I was introduced to the hauntingly addictive voice of Natalie Mering who goes by the name 'Weyes Blood' (inspired by Flannery O' Connor's novel 'Wise Blood'), when I listened to her latest single, 'Andromeda'. Borrowing from the album art, it'd be safe to say that if the strange whimsical light coming in from the window of a house under the ocean had a voice of its own, it would sound like Weyes Blood's Andromeda. It picked me up from the middle of an insignificant two wheeler ride and dropped me straight into a breakup I didn't know I was having. If you're one with parents who have a happy marriage, it'll still make you feel like you're on the road sitting next to your old man, a very orange sun beating softly down on your faces, on the way to see your mother for the very first time. Patient, seemingly organic beats and lulling vocals that will drape like the folds of satin around the parts of you that ache. What's better, when she's done, they will long to ache even more.

With some highly unpredictable chord progressions, a sincere debut by the church organ, the most graceful vocal transpose I have come across and a guitar that almost has a voice of its own towards the end, Andromeda will make your sigh of breath want to go and write an autobiography of its own.
While 'Be Free' from her 2016 album 'Front row seat to Earth', is slightly more lit up and merrier, it has some very subtle hints of a potential Andromeda in the works. The soft grandeur of the parts where Natalie hums to the bass, has the ability to be the background music to your next 'courageous but appropriate' slo-mo walk out.

I love how Weyes Blood takes her time to sing. There is nowhere to get to, but just a process that must be savoured. Her melodies twist and turn and make you writhe, keep you on an edge thinking they will reach some sort of a closure. But they don’t. They keep travelling. With haunting harmonies entering every now and then. She began as a multi-instrumentalist in noise and experimental rock with sort of folkish undertones when she played bass for the band jackie o-motherfucker before they split, to become a solo act.

11.01.21

Listening to Sakamoto slows everything down to the speed of the warm blood oozing out of my innards, into the knickers. His compositions come with their own blood filled interiors, like wine sloshing around in slow motion, every swirl captured. You wish it were in your mouth, such liquid folds breathing into your ears, you wish for the sounds to fall like light on your bulging veins. It surrounds you in the shape of your body's offset, never really touching you. Listening to his music is like walking in a space, inch out your tongue and you taste something you cannot see, until you realise it isn't even your tongue doing the tasting. Senses surrender into one another so willingly, you fear for your disintegration yet you are marvellously held together, the matter of you. There is a ceremony in my womb right now, the blood in me tides in response to this gravity, so forgiving. I want to be carried away, I am going to be carried away. To the ends of sweet surrender, so much to learn and aperture to. I succumb to the callings of this world. It is nowhere else to be found but in my body, I twist and move in attempts to look inward, dance is nothing else but. I know. I know what you are saying. Hold on. We will be dropped safe back home


Lights flicker now, I turn my head and now lay quiet.

Live moshing

Ryuichi Sakamoto

30.03.21

Live moshing

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Oneohtrix Point Never // Giant Claw

Playing 'Long Road Home' by Oneohtrix Point Never and Giant Claw's 'Disworld' back to back makes my neurons get down the roller coaster that is this experiment and puke out pure drunken joy. I've cried and had my eyes roll back into my sockets at the same time. If the beautiful LCD fluid leaking from my phone would make one last sound before dying out into the pixel cosmos, it would sound like this.
Glitch and melody tugging at different degrees in both the tracks. The analogous and the digital slipping away from the party , making some messy love to one another in the other room, cannot help but be audible to the entire fan base while at it. Long Road home is much more held together a piece in comparison to Disworld. The latter just tangents every chance it gets, yet never stops being 'melodic'. Gives glimpses of a distinct kind of nostalgia one can only feel in the depths of dystopia. The use of stringed sounds is genius. A take on Shamisen? Or some ancient oriental / east asian instrument.
Watching the video of Long road home only validates my analogy of love-making themes. It deserves candidacy for the background music to all our doomed love-making sessions.

04.05.21

21.07.21

Full simmer

Ode to my fishy everythings - what is lost will be found will be lost again

Behold fellow creatives ! Here to relieve you of your misery, the long-awaited arrival of the maiden in mattress , Jamshed-Chitrabanu : born out of a cosmic deep-fried recipe read out to the planets during the big bang. Medium-rare with a pinch of ‘unhurried staring outside the window for countless hours’ and a massive tempering of ‘infinitesimal jerks of actual performance’, here comes, stumbling on her plastic chariot, the self-proclaimed conceptual love-child of all your greatest ideas till date with ardent refusal to ever refer to herself in first person . Let it be recommended to only meet her stellar apparition armed with thick pairs of spectacles lest one be blinded by her unshakeable qualities of honesty and maddening self-awareness. Let it also be known that every once in a while , certain selective mortals would receive the opportunity to fly 5 inches above the ground assuming a dog-like position and following the intoxicating wisdom that emerges when she lets down her hair. A cosmos-wide memo must be sent complete with a ‘PFA’ opening and CCing the concerned parties of the Big Bang II in the making, auteured fully by hers truly. These concerned parties - the cold-blooded conglomerates ,callous corporations and the diabolical unethical subliminally-political poppies of the world- must feel free to treat this as a non-negotiable notice served in advance before their corrupt and consumerist institutions are blown up from inside-out with a snap of J-banu’s sleek and sexy ring-ridden fingers. Also to be noted is that this is nothing short of an invitation for all the ‘decentralized decolonised anti-institution anti-establishment’ like-minded lillies in the making to join J-banu on the universal microphone when she sings her hit single “Regenerate, you degenerates”, showcasing nothing but 1. her life-long perseverance to highlight the role of regenerative living models in undoing the horrors of mankind and 2. her unending love for music, latter being her only true lasting love-affair. Joining her ranks requires two simple and gracious offerings, one being a cup of the infamous two-leaved potion and the other being a fine pair of ear-adorns, for there is nothing our dear J-banu loves more than subtle stimulants presented by fellow creatives. Some pointers to know before approaching her at any and all social gatherings are 1.Asking her where she is from is an absolute red flag and if asked regardless(on account of you being a boring prick) will be met by a half-confused half-seemingly-seductive answer on the lines of “Nowhere really, where do you want me to be from?” 2. However, amongst questions welcomed are those regarding the eternally-growing list of creative endeavors that keep her hungry and aspired and therefore unwilling to lay at the altar of mediocrity. The answer -as repeated several times in her head as well as all her To-Do lists- would range from writing about her favorite pieces of music, short stories for children or even, owing to the ruthless romances pursued in the digital world,erotica. She is certain she would soon find herself in a perfectly-tailored setting laid out by none other than her all-time confidante ‘the cosmos’ wherein she would be looked up to as a boiling (and not simmering anymore) beacon for broad back bitches all over the world. Words like ‘systemic’, ‘closed-loop’ and ‘resilient’ get her heart kicking at psychedelic BPMs often acting as a necessary reminder that she is, at the end of it all, a mere mortal. All of the universe shall watch her riddle to her grave swearing that posterity was and is her only true religion.

illustrative somethings

Brewery

j-Banu et al.

ILLUSTRATED BY Srabanti Dasgupta
WRITTEN BY Mashumi Dave

illustrative somethings

Negative space

In Flight/In Decay

Central Vista Redevelopment