asha sheshadri: whiplash

Recital presents the first full-length vinyl LP by sound artist Asha Sheshadri. Whiplash combines elements of sound poetry, diary-like narrations, and delicate incidental music. Sheshadri has crafted a unique and marvelous album here. Limited edition of 200. 180-gram black vinyl. Includes 12-page printed artist booklet. "This record is an alternate approach to the autobiographical 'confessional' -- I wanted to stitch together some pivotal sketches in self-understanding and forgiveness. While their designs may seem affectively disparate, they are in fact quite interrelated. My intention (as with past recordings) is to task the listener with tracing the contours of the narrative (or lack thereof). Each track contains sound from video work, excerpts from writers I admire, ethnographic methods, recovered and recycled voice/text memos, photographs from personal and public archives, and research-driven fictions. These sources expand and collapse into each other, only to reveal the eponymous 'whiplash.' To me, the feeling of 'whiplash' is the collision of: a refracted ambivalence towards what was once real, the endless cycle of reckoning with wherever 'home' has taken place, the fraught process of anchoring one's self in the wake of slow-release trauma, and how (if even possible) to translate all of this into artwork." --Asha Sheshadri, 2023