There is something refreshing about an artist deliberately stepping away from the noise of contemporary music culture and asking the listener to simply slow down and listen. That is the philosophy behind Antidote, the debut album from Mumbai-based singer, composer and producer Abraham Khanna, released through his new creative venture, The BRAM Project.
Rather than treating electronic music as a vehicle for beats or spectacle, Khanna approaches it as a language for storytelling. Across ten instrumental tracks, Antidote moves through electronic, neo-soul, R&B, funk, ambient and cinematic territory, creating an album that feels less like a collection of individual songs and more like a continuous emotional landscape.
A young producer with an unusually broad perspective
At just 19, Abraham Khanna is already an intriguing figure in India's emerging independent music scene. A completely self-taught singer, composer and producer from Mumbai, Khanna has worked across contemporary pop and R&B and has previously contributed production to projects involving established artists such as Jubin Nautiyal. His musical identity sits somewhere between modern pop sensibility, R&B songwriting and increasingly adventurous sound design.
That background is important when approaching Antidote. This isn't an album created by an electronic producer trying to imitate an established underground aesthetic. Instead, Khanna brings the instincts of a songwriter and producer into instrumental music, giving the compositions a strong sense of melody and emotional direction.
The result is an interesting meeting point between accessible musicality and atmospheric experimentation.
An album designed for immersion
Antidote consists of ten tracks, beginning with “Flying Fish” and moving through pieces such as “License to Kill,” “Echoes of Epiphany,” “Dawn and Dusk,” “Beyond the Rise,” “Will-o'-the-wisp,” “Outlaw Blues,” “Midnight Bloom,” “As It Goes On” and “letters that were never sent.” The album lasts approximately 41 minutes.
The track titles themselves offer clues to the album's emotional vocabulary.
“Flying Fish” suggests escape and imagination. “Dawn and Dusk” occupies that fascinating space between beginnings and endings, while “Will-o'-the-wisp” evokes something elusive that appears briefly before disappearing again. Toward the end, “letters that were never sent” introduces an especially intimate sense of unresolved emotion.
These aren't merely descriptive titles. Together they establish Antidote as a record concerned with inner states rather than conventional narratives.
Khanna describes the album as a collection of instrumental stories exploring escape, ambition, nostalgia, healing and self-discovery, and the music is deliberately open enough for listeners to attach their own experiences to those themes.
That openness is one of the album's greatest strengths.
Electronic music without the usual boundaries
For listeners coming from experimental electronic music, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Antidote is the way Khanna refuses to place the album neatly inside one genre.
There are electronic textures, but this isn't straightforward electronica. There are R&B and neo-soul influences, but it isn't really an R&B record. Funk and nu-jazz enter the picture, while cinematic passages give the music an almost soundtrack-like quality.
This genre fluidity makes the album particularly appealing for listeners who enjoy music that exists in the spaces between categories.
“As It Goes On,” for example, is described by Khanna's own project as an instrumental journey through electronic, neo-soul and ambient soundscapes. “Midnight Bloom” is conceived around the atmosphere of late-night listening, while “Echoes of Epiphany” focuses on evolving melodies and immersive production.
The emphasis is therefore less on traditional song structures and more on atmosphere, movement and texture.
And that is where Antidote becomes particularly compelling.
The importance of space
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary experimental electronic music is the use of space: silence, ambience, slowly developing textures and subtle changes can sometimes communicate more effectively than a wall of sound.
Antidote appears to understand this principle.
The album's concept is explicitly centred around immersive listening, with the project being described as a late-night, headphone-first experience. Rather than encouraging listeners to consume the record as background music, Khanna has been presenting it through intimate listening sessions in cafés and creative spaces.
That approach feels particularly appropriate for the music.
Antidote isn't necessarily a record demanding immediate attention. It is better suited to headphones, nighttime journeys, solitary walks or those moments when you want music to create an environment around you rather than constantly demand your focus.
In an era of increasingly compressed attention spans, there is something almost rebellious about making an album that asks the listener to be patient.
From Hindi pop to instrumental experimentation
Perhaps the most fascinating element of Antidote is the sense of transition it represents in Khanna's artistic development.
His earlier production work has connected him with the world of contemporary Indian pop, but The BRAM Project allows him to explore a considerably more abstract side of his musical personality.
That makes Antidote feel like more than a debut album. It feels like the opening statement of a parallel artistic identity.
Instead of vocals explaining what the listener should feel, Khanna uses instrumental composition to leave room for interpretation. A melody can suggest nostalgia without defining the memory. A texture can create tension without explaining its source. A rhythm can imply movement without telling us where we're going.
For an experimental music audience, that distinction matters.
The standout quality: emotional accessibility
What makes Antidote interesting is not simply its mixture of genres. Plenty of electronic albums combine ambient music, R&B, jazz and cinematic production.
Khanna's more distinctive quality is the emotional accessibility of the material.
The compositions appear designed to remain approachable even when the production becomes atmospheric. There is an underlying melodic sensibility that prevents the music from disappearing completely into abstraction.
That balance between accessibility and experimentation is difficult to achieve.
Antidote doesn't appear interested in proving how experimental it can be. Instead, it uses electronic production as a means of communicating mood.
That makes the record especially easy to recommend to listeners who may normally find more experimental electronic music intimidating.
A soundtrack for the space between things
The recurring themes of Antidote are escape, transformation, nostalgia, healing and self-discovery, which give the album a surprisingly coherent emotional identity.
“License to Kill,” for instance, is framed around transformation and letting go of older fears and versions of oneself. “Dawn and Dusk” reflects on the uncertainty between endings and beginnings. “Outlaw Blues” explores freedom, solitude and the decision to follow one's own path.
These ideas make the album feel like music for transitional periods in life.
It is music for leaving something behind.
For starting again.
For remembering something you thought you'd forgotten.
For being alone without necessarily feeling lonely.
And perhaps that is why the title Antidote works so well. The album isn't presented as an escape from reality through pure distraction. Instead, it offers a quieter kind of remedy: stepping away from the noise long enough to hear your own thoughts again.
Final thoughts
Antidote is an ambitious debut from an artist who clearly isn't interested in remaining confined to one musical identity.
Abraham Khanna brings together electronic production, neo-soul, R&B, funk, ambient music and cinematic influences into a record that prioritises atmosphere and emotional storytelling over conventional genre boundaries.
For electronic and experimental music listeners, the most exciting thing may be what Antidote suggests about Khanna's future.
At only 19, he has already demonstrated an understanding of production, melody and mood, while The BRAM Project gives him a space to explore ideas that don't necessarily fit within conventional pop structures.
Antidote may not be an aggressively experimental record - and that's precisely what makes it interesting.
Its experimentation is subtler.
It happens in the spaces between genres, in the gradual evolution of textures, in the decision to tell stories without words, and in the invitation to listeners to bring their own memories and emotions into the music.
In a musical landscape that often rewards immediacy, Abraham Khanna has made a record that asks us to slow down.
And sometimes, slowing down really is the antidote.
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