Sri Lankan-born, Melbourne-based ANUJA is a singer-songwriter and producer who lyrically explores love, existence, and presence.
With a string of singles released the last half decade (which he recorded at his home studio while balancing a career as a doctor) and a regular of Melbourne's open-mic circuit, ANUJA's newest release is titled 'Your Stranger'.
It looks beyond the deeper meaning of true love and predestined soulmates who live 'forever' to remain present in the moment, to live genuinely by embracing a romantic form of existentialism.
A smooth, cruisy dream-pop beat opens the song, looping languidly as ANUJA's vocals distill an emotive honesty that's saturated in hope, the lyrics while forecasting an unknown future brim with a yearning to appreciate your lover in the moment without distracting yourself by bigger cosmic ideals.
'In this room in this moment / We are ours that's for certain'
It's instantly ethereal as well as cinematic, like a soundtrack to a rom-com that has you pouring happy, warm tears down your cheeks.
"A romantic take on existentialism," shares ANUJA, "the song is about dropping the obsession with cosmic certainty – rebirth, reincarnation, 'forever', fate and choosing the only thing you can actually hold: the present moment with the person you love."
Ahead of the song's release tomorrow (28 January), today scenestr is delighted to premiere 'Your Stranger'. Enjoy.
"This song is a conversation between two lovers. It's one person saying, I don't know what will happen between us in the bigger sense; whether we'll go to heaven, whether there's reincarnation or rebirth, whether we're twin flames or soulmates. I don't know, but what I do know is that in this moment, we're together.
"The title draws influence from and spins a loose romantic twist on Albert Camus' novel 'The Stranger'; the narrator in this song is also a stranger because in a world often obsessed with forever and the performance of cosmic meaning, this person is more concerned with simply being with their lover in the here and now."
When it comes to creating the music, ANUJA handles every aspect. "I write and produce my own music. In this song, I played and programmed every instrument.
"This is also the first song of mine that I myself mixed and mastered as well. So essentially, 100 per cent of what you hear in this song is me.
"The production is intentionally minimal, but cinematic: voice-forward, reverb and delay used as atmosphere, bass and drums kept tight to preserve pulse beneath the haze."
ANUJA's day job as a doctor also inadvertently influences his songwriting. "I am also a doctor, balancing a medical and music career. It can be challenging managing time between the two disciplines but I try.
"I am aiming to specialise in psychiatry. Perhaps, subconsciously, my day to day exposure to human vulnerability and mortality finds its way to my lyrics."
