Sicko is a freak 4 freak, crazy 4 crazy wet blankie. This album was hobbled together over the years following the Ghost Ship fire which occurred December 2nd, 2016. It’s been 5 years (wild) and I believe all us survivors are vastly different people since then. My mental health issues were always a bit out of control and the aftermath of Ghost Ship, despite the labor of love that went into a massive mutual aid effort I had rarely experienced before, sent my brain into a deep, perhaps necessary, pit. The work that birthed this album was my rope, and while some of these sounds and songs feel old, they were built slowly and with the support of my friends. I am so grateful for medication and the disability justice community. I am deeply grateful for my fellow sick in the head friends who are dedicated to working on themselves and with each other. I am really grateful for all the people in my life who choose to stay connected to me despite some not cute behavior, and I feel additionally grateful for those who hear me when I call them out on the same.

All my music is dedicated to Beni and the Queer and Trans freaks that make my life so fun and wholesome and nerdy and joyful and cool and weird. I want safety and empowerment for us all. I want us to make stuff when we want to and consume stuff when we want to. I want us to have shelter and whatever we need to feel the least shitty on our shitty days and super happy on our happy days. — Sharmi Basu, Beast Nest

"A sonic journey comprising of six tracks, Sharmi Basu’s "Sicko" is the zenith to their expansive catalog of experimental compositions that meditates on envisioning a sense of personal and collective liberation. This forty-four minute long masterpiece bends, weaves, repeats, deconstructs then rebuilds sound to formulate a new language of healing communicated uniquely through the world of Beast Nest. As a prominent educator and healer within their community, Basu’s artistic output has always been connected to sharing the power of compassion, and how to create tangible bonds between marginalized people through music. Even in the most dissonant valleys of Sicko’s sonic landscape, Basu never abandons their listener. Rather, they descend into darkness with you as the instrumentation surrounds you with the rhythmic pulse of various arpeggiators and drawn out sound textures crescendoing up to the LP’s closing waves of bliss.

"Sicko" offers more to the listener than just an album — it is an experience of aural idiosyncrasies and multi-dimensional processes that lead one to find solace away from the colonialist confines of the material world. Upon multiple replays of this album, I was reminded of the catharsis I felt when I first fell in love with Beast Nest’s work: a sense of communal healing Basu generously offers to those closest to the heart of their artistic vision."

— Sepehr Mashiahof, Bedroom Witch

"Sharmi Basu delivers an interplanetary opera of diasporic survival. The tracks lead one on a journey of perseverance and/of sound. One’s feet loses contact with the ground and one’s imagination collides with the sensorial immediacy of the moment. And while it is a narrative firmly placed in joy and discovery, it presents a model or trajectory of how harmony cannot exist without dissonance and richness can only extend out from origins of emptiness. “Sicko” is disembodied and yet simultaneous grounding, questioning one’s reliance on mainstream narratives of direction. It is a multivocal party in a world in which even music receives the violence of categorization and conclusion. This album is the sound of persistence of joy in a world where one must question the surplus and generation of body supremacies. We are carried through on the beat and the unavoidable need to move together in dynamic times."

— Marlo De Lara (she/they/siya),

credits

released January 28, 2022

All Music Written and Composed by Beast Nest
Recorded at Santo Studios by Zachary James Watkins
"Into The Tangerine" Recorded by Sharmi Basu
Saxophone by Genox Devi
Mastered by Jake Rodriguez
Artwork: Khushboo Gulati