Ananda Sen and Miti Adhikari. Photograph: Tara McManus
Rock artist Ananda Sen and producer Miti Adhikari had been like household. Rock artist Ananda Sen and producer Miti Adhikari had been like household. So when the veteran sound engineer was admitted to the hospital simply forward of the listening session for his solo album, Pages From The Previous, Sen was on the verge of cancelling the occasion altogether. “I used to be going to cancel it as a result of I used to be in no state,” he says. “However, you recognize, Sam, his spouse was like, you’ll be able to’t do it. He can be tremendous pissed at you.”
Talking simply days after Adhikari’s passing, the Kolkata-bred, Goa-based Sen—finest identified for his work with rock acts like the Supersonics and the Ritornellos—merely says, “That is the toughest album I’ve made.”
About eight years within the making, this one is deeply private for Sen. It’s not simply because Adhikari—the one who pushed Sen to finish and launch Pages From The Previous—isn’t any extra, but additionally as a result of Sen mined a few of his most intimate reminiscences to write down songs like “Chang,” “Sky Excessive” and “Give It All Away.”
He says, “It’s like a diary, I didn’t wish to launch it. It’s an excessive amount of about me and my life, and a extremely large a part of this taking so lengthy has been me not eager to launch it, and actually it’s Miti [who pushed me], as a result of he was actually happy with it. He thought it was actually good.” When requested about Adhikari’s favourite songs, Sen says he had a selected tender spot for the lead single “Sky Excessive” in addition to the title observe and the melancholic, dreamy “Give It All Away,” which closes Pages From The Previous.
Some songs have been within the works because the Ritornellos days, however there was at all times a hesitance from Sen about writing and releasing music after feeling “burnt” from his time in indie bands. The artist had gotten again to enjoying guitar after a three-year break, when he targeted on what has turn out to be his present job—educating English.
At Adhikari’s “nagging,” Sen lastly obtained round to placing some songs down in Kolkata after which in Goa, the place he moved in 2018. Adhikari even adopted Sen to Goa, dwelling down the highway from one another, assembly each different day for drinks, dinner, conversations, and music. Sen says of the method, “He knew precisely what I wished. I knew precisely what he wished. And it was simply enjoyable, you recognize, we’d be having a drink one night time, and we’d be like, ‘Oh, let’s see what we did [on a song].’”
Sonically, these are songs that keep true to Sen’s rock and roll aesthetic, from Dylan to Springsteen and extra. In the event you appreciated the Supersonics’ debut album Maby Baking, then there’s undoubtedly one thing for you. Sen even introduced in former bandmates, together with Avinash Chordia (recording remotely in Australia), guitarist Rohan Ganguli, bassist Nitin Mani, Mumbai pop band The Color Compound’s Bradley Tellis, indie rock act the Ganesh Talkies’ vocalist-guitarist Suyasha Sengupta, and bassist Roheet Mukherjee, amongst others.
Sen says, “Miti virtually performed on nearly all of the songs. Whether or not it’s somewhat little bit of keyboard or somewhat guitar half, and I wished that. As a result of within the studio, it was simply the each of us. These are one of the best reminiscences for me.” On condition that the 2 had usually spoken about enjoying the songs from Pages From The Previous as a duo, Sen is now form of dismissive of the concept he might turn out to be a bandleader and take this solo album on the highway.
Nonetheless, there’s a silver lining even in what Sen calls a “Shakespearean tragedy” in Adhikari’s passing earlier than the discharge of the album. “His passing goes to make lots of people hear it. I used to be going to do that actually lo-fi launch and it might have simply flown below the radar. However I feel possibly that’s his final reward to me,” Sen says.