Amartya
Ghosh
As someone who paints empty wine bottles and thinks “cake is always better than a
facebook like”, Amartya Ghosh is not low on quirk, some of which he brings into the
alignment of his new EP, Broken Compass. From life in Jamshedpur to his a room of his
own in college, his music encompasses personal experience that can easily transmute
itself into universal sentiment. Amartya catches up with Score on how his music comes
straight from the heart of a guy who loves to sleep and exudes a characteristic optimism.
When did you start creating music?
I wrote my first song when I was thirteen. Most of what I wrote
back then was for myself. Jamshepur didnt really have too
many outlets for original music and I was still pretty much in
the dark about the indie scene in the country. I started living by
myself in my second year of college. This gave me a lot of time
to revisit old songs and work on new ones. A lot of the material
on Broken Compass is also from this time. I like to think of that
as the real beginning. Moving into that room was the best thing
I've ever done.
What would you say are the primary ideas/sentiments
that your music conveys?
Sometimes I hold a mirror for others and sometimes I look at
myself. There are no primaries. Sometimes I think of songs as
photographs, I'll write something to capture a certain feeling
or immortalize an incident or an experience. Some of my songs
are statements. A lot of my songs are notes to myself.
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Who are you influenced by?
Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead, Smashing
Pumpkins.
How do you perceive your music independent of its
reception by an audience?
I try not to think of the audience when I write. Different people
give me different opinions about my music anyway. To me, its
like the background score to the movie we're all a part of. :)
Tell us about your EP. How did you decide the songs
that would go on it?
Well I have a lot of songs and it was around last year when I
decided I should go ahead and record a bunch of them. I wanted
my first EP to have the 'mellower' material I had. The songs on
Broken Compass are from around the same time.
They're romantic, personal and have always been part of a set.
The name Broken Compass is from a verse in one of the songs
(Explorers). Explorers is a song about that time. It talks about
love, hope and aimlessness. I really don’t know what to expect
of this EP but its a start!