Vignettes
Vadi Records (40 mins)
Vignettes is a series a small windows into the life, history and identity of its creator, London-based sitar player and producer Tommy Khosla. It is an exploration on the themes of mixed heritage (Khosla has roots in India, France and the UK) and neurodiversity that is filled with equal parts nostalgia and curiosity.
Across a collage of 18 very short tracks, most drifting in at around the one- or two-minute mark, sitar leads the way through lo-fi hip-hop beats, synths that blur between ambient and chillwave, and cameos from instruments such as shakuhachi and cellotar, all played by Khosla themself. Melodies also drift by the way of Hindustani classical music and English folk (with echoes of Sheema Mukherjee with the Imagined Village on tracks such as ‘Flora’). The use of sitar in these contexts has the risk of coming across as very corny, but such pitfalls are avoided with Khosla’s obvious skill at their instrument and their adventurous composition.
It all feels deeply personal, inspired by Khosla’s grandparents’ slideshows of their travels in north India, and littered with frequent snippets of family reminiscences and field recordings. Vignettes has been three years in the making, and is an accomplished debut for Khosla, with an impressive vision and maturity that belies their 22 years.