Tinctures - Heads and Tales (2021)

On August 7 2021, Subcontinental Records will pre-release 'Heads and Tales', the first studio album of eclectic Indian piano-guitar duo, Tinctures – a series of fifteen immersive sound-worlds.

Tinctures' intimate chamber-music can be described as a confluence of Hindustani and Carnatic, jazz and European classical music and has a distinct aesthetic that is neither traditionalist nor modern, embracing the infinite possibilities that emerge through the meditative involvement of interacting freely through music.

What drives the Bangalore-Berlin duo is a mutual love for creating sonic narratives unbound by traditional ideas of consonance and dissonance, rhythm, or structure. "I enjoy making music with Nishad because there's room for all kinds of sound. He receives anything I play and frames it in a way that lets us travel further in that direction," says Aman.

Playing this kind of music can be likened to venturing out into the wilderness, and a good travel partner makes all the difference. Nishad elaborates on their collaboration: "The friendship to me is as important as the musical connection. A lot of what we do is improvised music and it relies on trust and shared sensibility. We have to get along and like the person we’re working with."

'Heads and Tales' is concept-based, with many of the tracks forged through processes of gameplay—musical creation within the parameters of certain rules—and many others drawing on ideas from beyond the realms of music, exploring visual, literary, conceptual, philosophical and spiritual themes.

'Simple Machines' peers into a mechanical world where piano and guitar interact like gears and pistons. Sometimes they converse politely, at other times all semblance of law and order breaks down completely. 'Trees' provides a hauntingly exquisite underscore to an image by renowned photographer Raghu Rai, while '20,000 Leagues Under' evokes quite a different landscape: the alien territory of the ocean floor, with piano chords splashing over grungy, sodden textures from the guitar, echoing the hazy deep.

The anguish of inner turmoil and its emancipation through lucid clarity are explored in the improvisations 'Man And His Shadow', inspired by a Taoist parable, and 'Boundless', based on a poem by Urmila Mahajan. There are also moments of humour and irreverence—‘Send In The Clowns’ is a zany respite from the intensity of studio recording.

Piano-guitar duos are not very common, as the two instruments often share similar roles within a musical ensemble. The duo uses this to their advantage; there are moments on 'Heads and Tales' where it's unclear even to the performers exactly who's playing what, like in 'Serpentine', a meandering lullaby for a snake, where the surreal ending is shared piecemeal between the two instruments.

'Dewdrop', also based on a poem by Urmila Mahajan, is a meditative sound-world set in Calcutta—a city where Nishad has lived and Aman has roots—connecting the 'experience of ancestors' to the certainty of the present moment, with the idea that '...like a drop of dew / I can only be certain that / I am here now.' "We've both spent years exploring different kinds of music", says Mahajan, "but when we come together, we're always playing the music of the moment."