For Assamese musician Joi Barua, teleportation is not merely a concept borrowed from quantum physics. On Teleportation (Unbound), it becomes something deeply personal: a journey that carries his language, childhood, cultural identity and family into an international collaboration spanning science, theatre and music.
Released worldwide on October 2 via UK label Signum Records, Teleportation (Unbound) brings together visionary artist Dr. Susan Lim, Indian composer and singer Joi Barua, and French co-composer and orchestrator Manu Martin for an ambitious orchestral and sci-fi musical odyssey. Recorded at London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios with the 70-piece Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the track explores cosmic frontiers, deep-space travel and the human desire for connection.
Conceived and written by Dr. Susan Lim, co-composed by Barua and Martin, and shaped through Lim’s collaboration with Harvard Neurology fellow Christina Teenz Tan, the song transforms complex scientific ideas into an emotional musical experience.
Rather than presenting the science as an abstract concept, the track turns it into a meditation on intimacy, separation and human connection. The vast orchestration gives that idea a sweeping sonic scale, with strings, brass and percussion carrying the song from scientific theory into emotional territory.
When Assamese became part of the cosmos
Barua’s contribution introduces another dimension to that cosmic narrative — Assamese.
“When I recorded the Assamese version, it was a quantum leap forward from where I have come from, to where I have come to be in this journey,” Barua says. For the musician, who grew up in Jorhat, Assam, the recording became a meeting point between his origins and an extraordinary global musical project.
His Assamese identity, language, cultural storytellers and musical influences all became part of the recording. So too did his father, who introduced him to the violin and taught him his first major scale.
“It is a teleportation of my complete being — mind, body, soul,” he says.
The emotional weight of hearing Assamese lyrics carried by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was difficult for Barua to put into words. He credits Lim and Deepak Sharma with helping him hold on to the vision of the project when the scale of the collaboration felt overwhelming.
“To hear the resonance of The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra firing up the Assamese lyric is a divine feeling,” he says. “I am a medium. It happened through me.”
That sense of cultural memory is central to how Barua understands the cosmos itself. “I am a small town guy,” he says. “My sense of the cosmos is still the memories of the sky above our childhood’s dreamy vision scope, the stories I heard growing up.”
For the musician, who grew up in Jorhat, Assam, the recording became a meeting point between his origins and an extraordinary global musical project.
Where technology meets art
He also rejects the idea that technology and art necessarily occupy opposing worlds. In his view, the two are “twin souls encapsulated in one form”, both capable of helping humanity understand consciousness and find solutions to its challenges.
That philosophy informs his approach to Teleportation (Unbound). Rather than treating the scientific language of the song as something detached or purely intellectual, Barua approaches it as an emotional bridge. Quantum entanglement becomes a metaphor for human intimacy, companionship and the desire to remain connected despite physical separation.
The Assamese version intensifies that idea. The phrase “I’m a part of you, and you’re a part of me” becomes simultaneously a scientific proposition and a deeply human sentiment, expressed through the poetic cadence of Barua’s mother tongue.
The journey of the song has itself crossed borders, moving through performances and collaborations in London, Berkeley and Singapore before reaching Abbey Road and eventually returning to the composers’ studio in its Assamese incarnation.
For Barua, that journey demonstrates that music can carry identity across seemingly impossible distances. “I hope they are left with a comforting certainty that distance is an illusion, and that true resonance never dies,” he says.
Ultimately, Teleportation (Unbound) allows Barua to do more than place Assamese within a futuristic musical experiment. It allows a language and a personal history rooted in Jorhat to become part of a much larger conversation about humanity, connection and the universe, showing that sometimes the most expansive journeys begin with the memories we carry home.
