AAYUSHI
Live at the Outsideleft Night Out’s Studio 67
Corks
Bearwood
Gotta level with you, we’d wanted to feature Aayushi at an Outsideleft Night Out, basically since we first heard her at the 2022 Lakeside Live Festival, where she performed on the acoustic stage. It’s taken a while. Meanwhile in that while, Aayushi has racked up over 5,000,000 streams on Spotify.
The Outsideleft Night Out was to be her final event of a busy year, Aayushi handpicked half a dozen of her favourite songs that meant the most from her hectic touring schedule. Her delivery was beautiful of course with vocals that soar aloft gently, as if on a summer breeze. Histrionics there are not. In between songs, Asyushi warmly discussed missing her mum who is on holiday in India and sang songs reflecting on her good feeling for both her mum and dad and the power parents hold for their children.
"I've done a lot of shows at sort of wellness events. Often the crowd spend their time when I'm performing lying down."
Asyushi has spent a good part of 2023 touring new-agey-wellness festivals, as she told the audience at our Studio 67 event on Friday, “Often a lot of the crowd spend their time during my performance lying down.”
When the show was nearly said and done, with the Outsideleft Night Out crowd mesmerised, Aayushi added the most incredible acoustic interpretation of Cher’s Believe. Difficult to imagine it is the same song you know and have reservations about.
No Outsideleft Night Out would be complete without the completely raucous and enormously contrasting sounds pumping up the stereo and the Friday Night record spinners Woodenhand and Prehistoric Man - who'd driven up from Hertfordshire, did not disappoint. There was a whole genuine sense of joy and cosy togetherness happening all night and when did that last happen after you'd left the house?
As Aayushi was leaving I mentioned that the poet Nafeesa Hamid was joining Liz Berry and Hannah Swingler at our final event of the year, in conjunction with the Bear Bookshop on December 6th, a benefit for Black Country Women's Aid, Aayushi mentioned playing Nafeesa down the aisle at her wedding in Ireland last summer. Oh wow. Like everything Aayushi does, that must have been amazingly beautiful.
We don't have video, so here's this. One of the handpicked songs Aayushi played for us on Friday. Catch her when you can.
Essential Information
Aayushi image by Duncan Jones the Poet
The Outsideleft Night Out returns to Corks on Friday February 2nd with David Benjamin Blower.
