Number Nineteen

by Jeet Thayil

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about

Number Nineteen is the second song on Thayil’s album, Speak Amnesia.

Recording in weekly late-night sessions between December 2021 and December 2022, Jeet Thayil (guitar, vocals) created the soundscapes of Speak, Amnesia in controlled bursts of improvisation and release.

The sounds seem to emerge as a response to the isolation and anxiety of the years that immediately preceded its creation.

They sound like 'future ghost music' or soundtracks to imaginary films. The truth lies of course with the recipient. Ghosts sometime indicate where the future lies. We are supposed to scare. I was not scared. If it was late-night labour that created them, then it was beholden that I listen at the same witching hour. What I heard left me disturbed and stirred in equal measure. There is a reason a record is called a record. It is the documentation of a moment, a snapshot that fades into time's brutal regime at the very moment of its creation. By the time you click on play, it's over, all that's left is the hieroglyph of a gone emotion. But like a photograph, a letter, or a scar, a piece of music is always there to take you back, even as the moment and the memory of that moment melts away. Thus, speaks amnesia.
lyrics

lyrics

Number Nineteen

Sometimes in Dream, I catch your eye.
You come back just to say goodbye
Yes, No Like you said it would be
Cross the ocean to get to the sea
Now the fleas outnumber the free
Like you said it would be.

Wake up to a day
Like the one before
Ask the captain to give you one more
scrape out a line
Keep it clean
stake your claim
to number nineteen

Number nineteen
Number nineteen

credits

released April 28, 2023
Catalog:AISSAI2302
Recorded at: Flights Of Fancy, Bengaluru
Mixing and Mastering: Adil Nadaf
Words and Voice: Jeet Thayil.
Strings and Brass Arrangement: Yashas Shetty
Piano,Electric Keyboard: Yashas Shetty
Art Work: Ninan Joseph
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license

about

Jeet Thayil Bengaluru, India

As a boy, Jeet Thayil traveled through much of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. He worked as a journalist for twenty-one years, in Bombay, Bangalore, Hong Kong and New York City, and he published three volumes of poetry. The first installment of his Bombay Trilogy, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.His book of poems These Errors Are Correct won the Sahitya Akademi Award. ... more