1999 was a huge year for us.

We were in our late teens, playing lots of shows that Daniel joked were "underground" because our songs always got buried. But we put on our own shows with proto versions of other bands--Migraine was our main jam, but there was also Koprophilia, Tantrik, Wire, Lime Rain, Part of the Scenery, Ajob, so many others. We'd cover current pop songs, like whatever was on MTV at the time, but we would do long ass versions and it would be different every time. (We didn't know what indie music was, or what jam bands were, but that's what we were doing, just badly.)

We used to play shows with metal bands too and it was awesome, it would be all these serious looking people in Sepultura shirts and black jeans and leather jackets and we would show up, me in shorts (and I had a special trick where I would take off my pants and play in my underwear), Daniel in a lungi, Imran in his dadcore khakis, and Jisha in a panjabi with jeans (this was like the absolute coolest look back then, esp after Anusheh Apa did it in the early Bangla days). Everybody would laugh at how ridiculous we looked but then we'd start playing. And then they wouldn't laugh anymore, because they would all leave.

I think we also did the Benson and Hedges Star Search Contest in 1999, where we came third but our music was played on national TV!! There was an email contest and we got so many emails about our music (like, 90 or so) that they thought we cheated. But it was really cool. That was the first time we personally got to interact with our heroes--like, I remember Imran and me walking down Central Road shaking because we had said hello to LABU RAHMAN. Those were crazy fucking days.

Man, I remember this one time I was in a room where Pearo Khan, Ahsan Elahi Fanty, and Shahbaz Khan Pilu WERE SITTING TOGETHER. I am 41 years old now and I would shit myself if I saw them today. Imagine being 17 and meeting your gods and seeing they're just dudes.

Toward the end of the year, our friends Koprophilia were recording their still unreleased debut album. (It's awesome and I have it if anybody wants.) Their bass player, Wasif, was a part of the TAB family and we asked him to let us have 2 hours of their 8 hour shift as we couldn't afford a full 8 hours. Wasif was kind of a jatiyo bass player at the time and we played lots of shows together. Also, back then there were only two bass players who owned good bass guitars. One was Wasif, the other was Shakib Bhai. I don't quite remember whose bass we used for this one but I think it was Shakib Bhai's because he was very generous with it.

We went to Music Man Studios. We'd only recorded a couple of times before, we had our first demo which was terrible and I recorded a couple of songs with my friend Asef, but that was it. But we were in good practice form and our music was simple, so we recorded everything live in 20 minutes. Charu Bhai, that god among sound engineers, mixed and mastered it over the next hour and a half, and then all of a sudden we had a recording of exactly how we sounded. (Charu Bhai, we love you, we love you, we love you.)

Back then, I was also playing drums for Cryptic Fate, and Shakib Bhai would play shows with us because he enjoyed singing rock songs which he wouldn't get to do with Fate. We also had a holud/FNF setup where we'd play friends' parties and stuff. Imran wrote Be Mine (Or) for Jisha as a way to declare his love, and I guess it worked because they are married now. But there was a small problem--the song was on a B Minor chord and Daniel hadn't learned that song as we didn't play it live. So we asked Shakib Bhai to play it. He heard it once, played it perfectly, and we were just like, holy fuck. That's the first time Imran and I got the idea of asking Shakib Bhai to form a band with us, though we never thought he would say yes. After he said yes and we formed The Watson Brothers, he translated My New Me and reconstructed The Horizontal Neck into songs that you may be familiar with from the Ohom album.

So also, this is the only time Shakib Bhai recorded with us. In every recording we make we always have him do a cameo because we love him, but this one is a serious musical role. We should market this as featuring Shakib Bhai, but I'm not gonna push my luck.

By early 2000, The Attempted Band broke up. We were busy with The Watson Brothers and applying to college. 2001-e I left for America and Imran went off to Canada. We thought that was the end for The Attempted Band and The Watson Brothers both. The Watson story continues elsewhere. But barely a month after these recordings were made, we thought TAB was done. We didn't play as TAB again until 2014.

I really really love the way these demos sound. They're so simple, so honest, so sweet, Daniel's bass line in My New Me just absolutely kills me. And of course we have the haunting voice of Jisha, whose singing takes me away to a time when I had the courage to be vulnerable. Imran's got that same sensitive touch that I love to this day. You can hear me overplaying on closed hi hats same as I do now. And even though none of us were even adults when we recorded this, you can still see that these are the same musicians we are now.

Every person involved in this is dear to us, a part of the TAB family. Soooo yeah. Here it is, no frills, no concept album, none of our atlami. Just some lifelong friends recording an EP the old fashioned way, in 20 minutes, on someone else's time.

Spotify link in comments, will post some lyric videos whenever Fahad sends them over.

Love,
Arafat

PS: The cover photo is from a concert at my friend Reaz's birthday. That's Wasif, not Daniel, playing bass on the cover. We don't have a lot of pictures from those days and it's always good to remember our dear friend.