B-Side Guys

Eight minutes to capture a lifetime slipping away. Amit Rai Sharma’s “Pieces” doesn’t just document his grandmother’s battle with dementia—it constructs a sonic environment where confusion becomes beautiful, where loss transforms into something approaching transcendence.

The London-born, Taiwan-based artist has spent years teaching himself the craft of recording, and that self-taught sensibility permeates every layer of this remarkable composition. His production approach mirrors the subject matter: fragments that almost connect, melodies that surface and submerge, rhythms that feel both familiar and foreign. The influence of American Football’s intricate post-rock and Radiohead’s electronic experimentation creates a hybrid sound that feels uniquely his own.

Sharma’s choice to inhabit his grandmother’s perspective reveals both courage and empathy. Lines like “Are you someone that I used to know?” carry devastating weight, delivered with vocals that float between clarity and haze. His voice—something he admits struggling with—becomes the perfect vessel for depicting cognitive drift. The uncertainty in his delivery isn’t weakness; it’s method acting at its most essential.

The track’s extended runtime allows for genuine emotional development. Where shorter songs might sketch dementia’s effects, “Pieces” has space to explore the condition’s contradictions—moments of lucidity punctuated by drift, love persisting despite recognition failing. His inclusion of his mother’s voice recording adds documentary weight to the artistic interpretation, grounding the abstract in lived experience.

Sharma’s musical vocabulary draws from his background in sound art and theatrical composition, evident in how he uses silence and space as compositional elements. The glitchy electronics don’t feel like ornamentation but rather like synapses misfiring, creating beauty from breakdown.

“Pieces” suggests that Sharma’s forthcoming album Bnju will offer something rare: deeply personal art that doesn’t collapse under its own emotional weight. Instead, it finds ways to make the unbearable somehow bearable through sheer sonic imagination.