Breathing Under Water
Anoushka Shankar
Where her other work in this period moves through loss with ceremony, this piece submerges. The title is literal in its phenomenology — the sensation of existing in a state not quite sustainable, where ordinary breathing requires conscious effort. Anoushka Shankar layers sitar lines over electronic textures here, a choice that gives the piece a contemporary ambiguity: it sounds neither anchored in tradition nor fully of the present moment, suspended instead in some pressurized in-between. The tempo is slow without being dirge-like, more like the slowed perception of a fever dream. There is something aquatic in the production — reverb applied with a heavy hand, individual notes dissolving into one another before they can fully articulate themselves. Her sitar playing in this register favors long sustains and microtonal slides over the technical fireworks she's equally capable of, prioritizing feeling over demonstration. The emotional experience is one of controlled overwhelm: the song acknowledges difficulty without dramatizing it, which makes it more honest than cathartic. Someone sitting through a period of emotional numbness, dissociation, or grief's middle stages — not the acute crisis but the long grey middle — would find this piece articulates something they haven't been able to name. It rewards headphones and closed eyes in a dark room.
slow
2010s
submerged, pressurized, suspended
Indian classical sitar tradition fused with contemporary electronic production
World, Electronic. Indian Classical Electronic Fusion. melancholic, anxious. Begins suspended in controlled overwhelm and remains there — not dramatizing difficulty but holding it with honest, unhurried acknowledgment.. energy 2. slow. danceability 1. valence 2. vocals: instrumental sitar as voice — sustained, microtonal, expressive over demonstration. production: sitar, heavy reverb, electronic textures, dissolving note transitions. texture: submerged, pressurized, suspended. acousticness 6. era: 2010s. Indian classical sitar tradition fused with contemporary electronic production. Headphones in a dark room during grief's long grey middle — not the acute crisis but the numb, unnamed in-between.