Tavishi - মশ্তিষ্কের কণ্ঠশ্বর | Voices in my head - Out now on Chinabot! (Mumbai | India) A mix of science, ambient and vocals

Hello!

Our new release is available now!

‘Voices In My Head’ is the latest release from the scientist, musician and visual artist Tavishi (Sarmistha Talukdar). Over 9 tracks, she creates a rich, abstract soundscape which explores her in-between status as a foreigner in a country which is hostile to immigrants, a queer woman from a patriarchal Bengali tradition, and an artist-scientist who finds the cold abstractions of academia removed from social reality. ‘Voices In My Head’ seeks to unite these ruptures in herself and her audience, creating a sense of catharsis and healing.

The album builds and shatters discordant whirls of sound and rhythm, moving between classical Indian tuning and experimental play. Sitting In A Circle Looking For Corners layers bells, intimate breaths and pitched cries to show how “the performativeness of expressing gender in a socially acceptable way can be exhausting,” Tavishi says. “As if we have to fit something in a square box when the entity is actually circular.”

Other tracks are have roots in science. I Eat Myself Alive was generated from research data that she published about a process called autophagy, in which cancer cells eats themselves to gain nourishment and survive stressful conditions. Tavishi converted sequences of amino acids into sounds, arranged according to the molecular signaling flowchart. Still, this scientific approach still has a raw, emotional core: “The track is also a reflection on how marginalized members of our society have to often erase parts of themselves to just survive,” Tavishi says.

Satyameva Jayate, a Sanskrit phrase which translates as “Truth triumphs alone,” builds into a tumult of repetitive loops and field recordings. “The history, experience and truth of marginalized people is being erased, misrepresented and gaslighted, it can be hard to believe in ourselves,” she says. “I made this track to express resilience and that no matter how much our oppressors want to erase our truth, it will triumph in the end.”

“It’s moving without any context, but even more so when you learn that it draws on her work as a scientist—parts of the track are a sonicification of research data she produced about cancer cells eating themselves to survive, which she says is “a reflection on how marginalized members of our society have to often erase parts of themselves to just survive.” It’s heavy and beautiful, and it’s hard to imagine that it could have been made by anybody else.” Noisey

"Her music explores an ambient, experimental landscape and is representative of her struggle in the myriad of situations she finds herself in as a woman of color operating in the world. This newest album, Voices in My Head , off of the Chinabot label, is a visceral exploration of the self, coupled with many noisemaking techniques and biological processes that are altered into electronic sequences of music.
The album is an ambitious crossover of many different worlds that all culminate into an album that’s both dissonant and inviting." Nest HQ

Thank you

Saphy

https://chinabot.bandcamp.com

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