BENGALURU: Love songs are an intrinsic part of music. But guitarist, composer and vocalist Sanjeev T’s recently released single looks to shed light on love in a more real sense, where it is clouded by conditioning yet discovers real struggles towards an uncertain future. The track is aptly named Not A Love Song and is also a part of his upcoming album, called Future. The song features Chennai-based vocalist-producer Native Indian aka Siva Baskaran whom Sanjeev is all praises for. He now intends to collaborate with various artistes on each of the tracks and plans to release them this year.
Having spent a decade undertaking guitar duties for maestro A R Rahman, the musician, who has previously dished out heavy fusion records – ST (2018) and alternative biggie – Epic Shit (2013) -- says Future is a new space for him. “It’s something one would probably not expect from an artiste like me. This time around, I was stuck at home, so inspiration had to be found from within and this album is my way of documenting the current times in our lives,” says Sanjeev, who is also the chief mentor at Rainbow Bridge School of Music, Bengaluru. Interestingly, Not A Love Song also leans on a genre less explored by him – that of lo-fi hip-hop. While the artiste had started scouting for material earlier this year, the jams came to halt due to the nation-wide lockdown. “Instead, I experimented and had fun sampling, and creating completely new sounds from the jams. Every indie release of mine has been around a bigger inspiration outside the studio,” he says.
While the lockdown did affect his plans, Sanjeev steered the album to a lo-fi landscape of sampled and live sounds, expressing the current emotional condition of a human mind. He adds, “Lo-fi is definitely the vibe of the season, which calls for slowing down and removing oneself from the rat race. This is new to us and so everyone interprets it differently.
We should take our time to deal with our new found problems, rather than trying to succeed and reinvent instantly.” Spread across six soundscapes, Future aims to express emotions felt during the period of being confined indoors. “Feelings of worry, missing a loved one who is no more, viewing life with new intentions, breaking traditional conventions and conditioning and feeling the rain while being locked down at home – these themes came from words of the tracks I sampled,” he says, adding that for Not a Love Song, the words Kaadhal (love in Tamil) Magic in the lyrics were brought together randomly. While he is currently working on the second single from the album, the current times are also taking up some mind space. “Half of my earnings are from live shows around the globe and this is something that we might not see much of in the near future,” he says.