For those unaware, New York-based guitarist, composer, and producer Shubh Saran will independently release his second full-length album and fourth overall release titled inglish on October 29th, 2021.

After releasing his last EP titled Becoming in late 2019, Saran toured briefly in the United States and India, and upon returning to the U.S. was faced with what became the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown.

During this time, Saran quickly began writing and recording demos for what would ultimately transform into inglish.

The new album explores new musical territory, as Saran incorporates predominant Indian and Middle Eastern instruments for the first time, while expanding the use of modular synthesizers in the momentous arrangements.

1. Enculture
2. intra
3. postradition
4. Ring Hunting
5. Terai 1911
6. the Other
7. There Across The Ocean
8. remember to come home soon
9. MOS
10. Mother Tongue Influence

This multi-layered album that explores concepts of identity far beyond the music opens on the fervent ’80s synth score-imbibed Enculture and the Eastern hipsway of intra and backs those up seamlessly with the gently buoyant postradition, the magnificently ambient Ring Hunting and then we get the ornately threaded gossamer of Terai 1911.

Next up is the rambunctious the Other and the atmospheric There Across The Ocean which are in turn followed by the whispery gauze laid out within remember to come home soon, the album rounding out on the forthright clemency of tone found in MOS, closing on the funkily defined, Eastern-imbued Mother Tongue Influence.

As people continue to think, move, and grow globally, the essence of native culture and identity are challenged, but still remain critically important.

For Shubh Saran, inglish is a longform message that pays tribute to the difficult process of assimilating while embracing your own culture.

Throughout his life, having to assimilate into different cultures has been a common occurrence for Saran, and inglish is a reflection of that progression and evolution. “I wanted to find a metaphor for this idea of existing in the world where you’re trying to navigate a global culture while at the same navigating your own culture and home culture,” he says.

Managing changes in culture and language has been a repeat experience for the Indian artist, who has spent time living around the world in places like New Delhi, Dhaka, Cairo, Geneva, Toronto, Boston, and New York City.

To provide some historical context, the term “inglish,” a portmanteau from the late 1900s, describes Indian English, a variety of the English language spoken in India and by Indian diaspora.

It’s a form of dialect that has shown similarity to British English, brought by British Colonization, but has become an amalgamation of Indian and Western culture.

This duality has been the focus of Saran’s most recent research and explorations in music, and it’s something that he has experienced first hand. “Within the last several decades, Indian English has taken on a life of its own, with a lot of influence from regional languages and dialects, and a mixture of ‘Queen’s English’,” says Saran, reflecting on the connection between the album title and its anthropological history.

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