B-Side Guys

Distance can provide clarity. For Amit Rai Sharma—former frontman of London band Ex Libras now based between the UK and Taiwan—geographical separation has created space to examine cultural inheritance with unflinching honesty on “Spells and Charms and Broken Homes,” the debut single from his forthcoming album Bnju.

This track arrives after a nearly two-decade gestation period, its journey mirroring Sharma’s own circuitous path through creative disciplines and personal crossroads. What emerges is a delicate excavation of intergenerational patterns, specifically addressing his parents’ failed arranged marriage and the cultural pressures that perpetuate such traditions.

Where many artists might approach such subject matter with either reverence or rejection, Sharma achieves something more nuanced. The track’s intricate sonic architecture—which echoes the glitchy melodicism of Japanese math-rock outfit Toe while incorporating Radiohead’s electronic experimentation—creates a soundscape that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive. This production approach perfectly complements the subject matter’s personal-yet-universal nature.

Most striking is how Sharma’s musical choices mirror the thematic contradiction at the heart of the song: the tension between cultural adherence and individual freedom. The composition itself moves between structured passages and moments of unexpected liberation, creating a sonic representation of someone navigating the boundaries of tradition.

The story behind Bnju—the album from which this single emerges—adds additional resonance. After Ex Libras dissolved in 2015, Sharma found himself at a creative nadir, his artistic fire “beaten down into barely-a-flame.” It took the intervention of three key figures—his mother, his wife, and a family friend—to reignite his creative purpose. This background lends “Spells and Charms and Broken Homes” a quality of hard-won perspective, of someone who has traversed difficult terrain to arrive at a place of understanding rather than judgment.

As a London-born Indian artist now partially based in Taiwan, Sharma occupies a unique vantage point from which to examine cultural intersection. What makes this debut single remarkable is how it refuses easy answers about tradition and modernity, instead creating a musical space where questions about cultural inheritance can resonate and reverberate, much like the carefully crafted sounds that populate this impressive introduction to Sharma’s solo voice.