The opening sound of Poetry Ceylon, Goa-based Aditi Veena aka Ditty's new album, is that of lulling waves crashing on a beach. That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the record, but curiously, Veena hadn't planned it that way. It was actually the album's ending that provided the roots for its beginning. "I had meant to start Poetry Ceylon with some kind of ambient sound, possibly a synth section. But what happened was that I ended up recording a track in my garden, all in one take. And it seemed like the birds were singing along with me. It was that crazy, so we decided to end the album with it. And since I had recorded some samples of the ocean, we went ahead and started the record with them [to tie things up with the theme of nature]," she says, ahead of a gig she'll play in the city.

This beginning and end sum up the sonic characteristics of a record that is an ode to Sri Lanka, a country where Veena spent a few years working as a conservationist, a vocation she still practises and which informs her music. Imagine a wind chime jangling faintly from a window. That's the sort of gentle nature that runs through the record, which contains the spoken word interspersed with Veena's soothing vocals.