Sanaya Ardeshir

Hand of Thought marks the debut full-length release by Sanaya Ardeshir under her own name — introducing a parallel practice that sits alongside her acclaimed work as electronic producer Sandunes. Crafted across India, Germany and the US, and featuring contributions from acclaimed percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar and saxophonist Rhys Sebastian, the record blends contemporary and electronic forms with an unconventional nod to cinematic and classical traditions — delicate piano motifs unfurling into otherworldly, meditative spaces before giving way to ambient drift, experimental electronica, and post-classical expression.

At its core is Ardeshir's exploration of matrilineality: the tracing of kinship through the female bloodline, and how intuition, wisdom and emotional inheritance pass across generations. The album draws on the experiences of Parsi women in her family who grew up in mid-20th-century Bombay, part of a community of fewer than 100,000 descended from Persian refugees who migrated to the Indian subcontinent in the 7th century. "It was not uncommon for Parsi households in India to own pianos by the 50s and 60s," Ardeshir explains, "and in a way I'm using the piano as a lens to examine the specific experiences of the women in my family as Parsis living in Mumbai in a newly independent India."

The title is drawn from Kosho Uchiyama's Opening the Hand of Thought, a seminal Zen text Ardeshir was reading as the album took shape — a hand extended across generations, "a refusal to let the light of creation be extinguished." Much of the music began during a 2016 Goethe-Institut x Border Movement residency in Berlin, on an upright piano in her guest room, and was later developed further in Mumbai on her grandmother's own piano, inherited along with her teaching books. The release marks the debut of Karigar Records, the label Ardeshir co-founded with Krishna Jhaveri.

Tower of Silence reimagines the soundscape of the ancient Parsi funerary practice of sky burials. It's a natural extension of the ancestral inheritance explored on Hand of Thought — the work takes its name from the Dakhma, structures where vultures once consumed the flesh of the deceased as intermediaries between life and death.

Since the 1990s, these birds have experienced the sharpest population decline of any species ever recorded, poisoned by the veterinary painkiller diclofenac in cattle carcasses. Ardeshir reimagines the Towers as portals where ancestors can be called upon not only to guide the souls of the deceased, but also to care for the spirits of the birds whose disappearance has come at immense ecological cost.

Sandunes' third transcendental album, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, is her debut on Tru Thoughts. The 13-track album challenges the celebration and reward of individualism, instead homing in on humanity's collective spirit and authentic expression — a reminder to do more of that which connects the earth and the body.

The album shares its name with a Salman Rushdie novel and its humanist message that arrives from newfound awareness. It speaks to the sentimental foundations involved in making a home when a tangible version of it doesn't exist — finding home in relationships, in ritual, in music and memory. The project moves through a dynamic electronic soundscape of soulful jazz currents, utopian synth moments and dancing percussion, reflecting on the evolution of identity, particularly womanhood, in the modern world.

Spaven x Sandunes is a project from Richard Spaven and Sanaya Ardeshir mixing forward-thinking drum language with intricate synthwork, weaving together a moody electro-acoustic tapestry. The pair met at Vh1 Supersonic festival in Pune, before embarking on an India tour and laying down the record across studio sessions in Mumbai and Bristol.

Originally released digitally in September 2020 to critical acclaim, the album received support from Benji B (BBC Radio 1), Gilles Peterson (BBC 6Music), and Jamz Supernova (1Xtra), with a vinyl edition including an additional track featuring MC Altaf.