Sharath Narayan Is A Good Fella
Sometimes good things happen in India.
I’ve been super lucky lately. On most days someone sends me new music. I’d say 80% of the time it’s actually quite good. I think about 10 weeks ago I got an email from someone named Sharath Narayan. He had sent a link to an EP he just released as Cosmic Attic, called “Climb”. I think I took a week to listen to it, I probably had a bunch of emails to write or some shit; it’s basically all I do anyway.
I’ve often thought that I’m drawn to music because of nostalgia. Songs I love help me reconnect with moments that happened, and if the moment stuck, some things I hear just serve to score it perfectly. It’s instinctive, and one of the few things where my intellect doesn’t interfere. I had this experience with a PCRC demo once, I couldn’t stop listening to it. I wrote them a long email about it. It was a pretty self indulgent exercise in writing. Sometimes I can’t help it. Like now for instance.
A track called Dim Gold stuck out on Sharath’s release. It had a certain subtlety and space to think that just worked for me. His voice.
There was a REProduce Listening Room session in Pune at this really amazing space called TIFA this past June. A former hotel, eleven rooms, three floors. We programmed eight of those rooms, and you’d have to find the next set in this post hotel situation. I thought that Sharath and Kumail would work together musically, so I asked them if they were down to try something together. They played an hour set over dusk in this small room with three open doors. There was one door facing a hallway open to the air, another of a larger room where one of the two PA stacks was, and another that led into a sort of narrow passage into another room. We put a mattress out in front of them. I was on that mattress for a while. Everyone was quiet, kind of in their own world. We left the lights off. By the time they finished night had fallen. Their set was really special.
After the Pune LR I ended up spending, I think, a week in Bombay. I was kind of stuck because I couldn’t access the foreigners quota on the train (I’m privileged) as my passport had expired (I’m an idiot), and I couldn’t really afford a flight back to Delhi (cos I’m broke AF). So I ended up staying with Sachin for longer than I planned. Which was great. He had this coffee that tasted like Coke. We ate some burgers.
One Saturday night Nush, Donn, and Ashhar were performing, so I went to go see them. It was fun, for the most part. The only downside was observing the ugliness bleed out of bodies at the witching hour of 1130–1230 outside Blue Frog. Throngs of wobbling victims championing their questionable talent, fueled by booze and an inflated sense of worth, all jockeying to subtly (or not) put each other down at the same time. I forgot about that. I used to live in Bombay, but thankfully I don’t do that anymore. Sharath was there. He was pretty quiet.
I had this idea that I wanted to try. I can’t remember if I suggested a video over that conversation outside Blue Frog or if he did. I proposed spending a day with him in Chembur where he lives and in his studio, to run through five or six takes of Dim Gold over dusk, and to then cut it as one take. In exchange he’d buy me a one way ticket to Delhi. Fair deal we figured. It was fun to do. It was just something I saw in my head. I have no sense of production value, unlike his mother who made these really delicate pakoras.
Anyway I like this video now, but I’m not sure if I will next week. Maybe I will. Hard to say. Pretty sure I’ll still like the song though. I just got my new passport yesterday.
Words by Rana Ghose — REProduce Artists
