Sunday, July 15, 2012

Week 3 - Skyharbor

Yes I know it's not the third week... but it's the third band so shhh!!

Today I want to talk about a band called Skyharbor. Explaining them is kind of difficult, so here is their Facebook bio:

"Starting out as a simple bedroom studio project, guitarist Keshav Dhar has seen SKYHARBOR quickly evolve into one of India’s hottest metal prospects, with huge admiration coming in from some of the biggest names in metal worldwide.

An astonishing amount of buzz also surrounded the band's first ever performance at the Bacardi NH7 Festival in Pune, India earlier this month, where they played to ove
r 1,000 people and were one of the weekend’s highlights.

The long awaited debut album from SKYHARBOR promises to be a landmark release for the Indian independent music scene, in no small part thanks to the incredible number of international guest appearances it will see, including the likes of Marty Friedman (ex Megadeth), Daniel Tompkins (ex TesseracT), Vishal J. Singh (Amogh Symphony) and Sunneith Revankar (Bhayanak Maut).


SKYHARBOR released their debut album 'Blinding White Noise : Illusion & Chaos' on April 23rd, 2012 worldwide via Basick Records."

I can't really explain how they work, but I do know that their music is freking mind blowing! Here is their most popular track, called Celestial.

I like how it separates from the really noisy sounds that Indian metal bands go with. The riffs are clean and the interludes are engaging. One could say it's just because of the massive amounts of post processing, but either way, on face value, it sounds pretty awesome. 

Sometimes I like the fact that you can't really tell the difference between this and any North American sound. It's a touchy subject for some because one could argue that there is no genuineness in the Indianness of it, but it still sounds really good man!!! 

Anyway, you can hear some of their other stuff if you youtube them, or go to their Facebook page for links to explore. 

That's all for today. Until next week then (hopefully). 

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Week 2 - The Captains of Hook

Just when you thought I was giving up again, here I am! Technically it's been a little more than a week, but things like time are minor logistics in the long run anyway.

The band I want to talk about today has quite an interesting story attached with them. In 2007, I got to see a band called Junkyard Groove in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival. I instantly fell in love with their music, and have been following them since. I even tried (sadly unsuccessfully) to get them to come to Toronto for a few gigs. So Junkyard Groove was my ultimate Indian Rock experience... Until they broke up...

And I was pretty crushed because I was hoping for amazing things to come from the group. And then one day I came upon The Captains of Hook. The Captains are essentially three fourth of JYG, including Sid, Craig and Hudstin and excluding the original vocalist. I was skeptical of them at first because Ameeth, the vocalist of JYG was a really big part of the band's persona and character. But then I started listening to their music. And yet again, I fell in love with their music.

The music is fun, narrative, very catchy and most of all it's light. No heavy lyrics and desperate attempts to be insightful. It's simple, clean, tight and honest. It's feel good music at it's core and it's the kind of music that you can play at any time of the day for a quick pick me up, which I really like.

I presume that they are working on their first EP. Here are a few songs that they have already released. You can catch all of their songs over HERE.




I've been in a few bands and I know that band politics are always a factor. The best bands in the world have broken up over the silliest things. I think that a big part of breakups is that you cannot stop making music. You move on to the next band, and on to the next project and you make it work because you do what you do for the music and everything else is second to that.

That's why I admire The Captains even more. You can instantly tell that the music comes first for them and in such a volatile industry for musicians in India, I think that their commitment to what they love is quite cool. The Captains will never be the same as JYG, and the "new" JYG will never be the same as it was in the past, but that's just why living music is so poetic.

So this week, check out The Captains of Hook and let me know what you think!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Week 1 - Dualist Inquiry


I found this guy on Tehelka's mini-series called The Music Project. His name is Sahej Bakshi and he is based out of  Delhi. The song that he plays on the Tehelka show was just really really really funky! He uses a pre-programmed pad and a bunch of other shiney looking computer things to get a really happy and heavy techno sound. Here give it a listen yourself:


Now you might say, what's so "Indian" about this? Well firstly the guy is Indian =D. But more importantly, I think that his music reflects a very real and relevant part of urban cities such as Delhi or Mumbai. Even the dude looks like he's a Delhi product and he has been through the "mall-iffication" of the city, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean that he's seen it.... whatever don't hate!

Anyway, he has a website which you can get to over -> Here, and he has a bunch of music on Soundcloud.com which you can get to over -> Here :D. I think he would be really fun to see live, even if he's just playing a set in a club or at a lounge.

So Dualist Inquiry definitely makes my Big Board for the time being. Check him out and let me know what you think.


Comeback Post

Hello all of the three readers of this blog. To be fair, it has been dead for a while. But what's not been dead is the Indian music scene. I have found a resurgence of Indian rock music in my music library and what a better time to restart the blogsterbation.

Originally, this space was to be used so that I would be forced to explore the world of Indian influenced/produced music. When I first started out, I didn't really know where to look for the good music, and I would often just randomly search youtube and the web. It turns out that a lot of Indians are quite lazy, and the average life span of a band in India is about as long as a summer monsoon.

So I have changed the intention of The Indian Reverb completely. I want this space to reflect the best of what Indian musicians have to offer, and I will be exploring not only the classic Indian bands of the 80's and 90's, but I will also take a look at bands that have come out with really good albums recently, and are being proactive in the local music scene.

Since I am based out of Toronto, expect to see posts about Indian musicians performing out of the Sub-Continent, and probably within North America.

So without further ado, I give you the reborn Indian Reverb, and hopefully this time around, I will be able to engage you at a much higher level and we will be able to explore the rock, pop, folk and any other genre of music that India has to offer.

Cheers,

Udai.

Check out my other blog :D