Reality on hold: Tarang Joseph on his latest song ‘Ecstasy’

Tarang Joseph
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

When you do not know what to say, lyrics can be a lifesaver. Or at the very least brighten your bae’s mood. What do songwriters do when they are stumped for words?

Singer-songwriter Tarang Joseph says, “I have words when I think of a song and sometimes I can’t put them together, but they paint a picture. I was trying to capture a fleeting moment that felt ecstatic, of feeling completely intoxicated, of being in a state of infatuation,” elaborating on his recently released single, ‘Ecstasy’.

“Lush. Ethereal. That’s what I tried to capture in the song with an ebb and flow of energy, mimicking a human heartbeat. I had written ‘Ecstasy’ in early 2021 but felt it needed something more — a call in response, a delicate energy to counter my male vocals.”

Tarang says he had been following Frizzell D’Souza on social media since 2019, but last year, chance brought him in touch with her manager Arvind Shenoy of The Urban Weaver. “The whole song came together with her voice.”

Written by Tarang and featuring Frizzell, with Surya Kalyan and Adesh Vinod on the guitars, the video is produced by Doc Awes and mastered by Stuart G Hawkes.

Listen to Ecstasy here:

“With ‘Ecstasy’ I wanted to capture the feeling of how being in love can feel much larger than life, enveloping you and putting you in an intoxicated trance. Love for anything can be blissful and transcendent.”

Hailing from a musically-inclined family and fed on a steady diet of Billy Joel, Disney and Broadway, Tarang started playing the piano at four and trained in singing from the age of eight. “When I was about 14, a couple of other like-minded teens and I began a band with the support of our ambitious parents — we called ourselves Fleeting Glimpse after our favourite phrase from Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’ and began performing around Bengaluru.”

“Elements of rock crept into my style, but I was inspired by blues and jazz because of the freedom to improvise and create melodies,” says Tarang, adding that by his late teens he began song writing even as he continued to play with his band.

When he was around 18, Tarang lost a friend to suicide and the tragedy impacted him deeply. “For over two months, I didn’t touch the piano, but when I finally did, my emotions just took over. Until then, my music was quite structured, but now it was a way to channel my emotions.”

This resulted in ‘Bungee Jumping’ a song accompanied by a music video to promote mental health awareness.

“I had found my song writing voice; it felt magical, almost spiritual and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a songwriter and music composer.”

In July 2020, Tarang began releasing his initial singles, eventually starting The Tarang Joseph Experience, a live band that performs his original music as an audio-visual live set.

His songs — ‘Superhuman’, ‘Time Machine’, ‘Feeling Empty’ and others — explore various moods and while Tarang says he is inspired by classic literature and existentialist philosophy, it is “music and love which give him goosebumps.”

Ecstasy, streaming on all music platforms, has made it to the top of many popular must-listen lists.