“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde.

By the time they made Love Is Slow Poison, Emergency Kiss had already survived years of misfortune, including a fire that destroyed their first synthesisers — the only ones they had. The album was recorded in a friend’s garage and released through a label whose infrastructure and reputation were as non-existent as the band themselves.

In the early 2000s, the shimmering tracks from the album inspired a new generation of Bangalore musicians, and soon Emergency Kiss became minor cult figures in the city. The band recorded two more albums afterward, but they disbanded before the second release. Three young women who couldn’t play music had run out of steam.

Yet their music endured.

The track “JUICE” is central to the album — best heard in full — a lyrical tour de force featuring the line:

“AUR JAB GARMI LAGTI HAI TO TUM PIGHALNE LAGTE HO.”
When it’s hot, you begin to melt.

Their music is edgy, unapologetically noisy, and carries traces of jazz and post-rock — not by intention, but through free-form performance. They did not care for genre labels like funk, rock, or synth‑pop. They simply made music.

Emergency Kiss wrote and sang in Hindi — not as a stylistic choice, but simply because it was the language they lived in. While bands of South Indian origin rarely write in Hindi, their fearless embrace of linguistic limitation became a source of creativity.

Only a limited number of copies have been re‑issued by ISSAI.

Buy in store: https://onthejunglefloor.com/products/emergency-kiss-by-issai