Recorded in weekly late-night sessions between December 2021 and December 2022, Jeet Thayil (guitar, vocals) created the soundscapes of Speak, Amnesia in controlled bursts of improvisation and release.

The sounds seem to emerge as a response to the isolation and anxiety of the years that immediately preceded its creation.

They sound like ‘future ghost music’ or soundtracks to imaginary films. The truth lies of course with the recipient. Ghosts sometime indicate where the future lies. We are supposed to scare. I was not scared. If it was late-night labour that created them, then it was beholden that I listen at the same witching hour. What I heard left me disturbed and stirred in equal measure. There is a reason a record is called a record. It is the documentation of a moment, a snapshot that fades into time’s brutal regime at the very moment of its creation. By the time you click on play, it’s over, all that’s left is the hieroglyph of a gone emotion. But like a photograph, a letter, or a scar, a piece of music is always there to take you back, even as the moment and the memory of that moment melts away. Thus, speaks amnesia.

Credits#

  • Words: Jeet Thayil
  • Guitar: Jeet Thayil, Yashas Shetty
  • Piano & Arrangement: Yashas Shetty
  • Synthesizers: Hollis Coats, Yashas Shetty
  • Mixing and Mastering: Yashas Shetty, Anant Rohmetra
  • Recorded at Flights of Fancy, Bangalore
  • Produced by Yashas Shetty for ISSAI.

Listen/Buy: https://jeetthayil.bandcamp.com/album/speak-amnesia-2