Live: Advaita, Indigo Children @ Blue Frog

Two of the four British Council Soundpad participants took stage at the Blue Frog on Sunday night. Delhi acts Advaita and Indigo Children (formerly known as The Superfuzz) have the opportunity to record in studio with ace Brit producer John Leckie. While Indigo Children have completed their alloted three day session, Advaita begin their studio time today. Swarathma and Medusa are the other two acts on the Soundpad roster.

The result of the Soundpad sessions will be a compilation disc which should be out later this year. Now to the proceedings.

A Sunday evening, 8:30pm gig featuring Indigo Children should’ve been hot news for the Blue Frog’s ‘younger’ audience. However, the venue was barely full with a crowd of less than 100. Among those present were the Soundpad and CCR peeps, joined by one section of the audience to the right of the stage whose enthusiasm wasn’t justified by the performance of one of the two acts that played.

Head downstairs for the full review, pics and the Indiecision.

Advaita

Advaita are and eight-piece act that blend Indian classical elements with the trappings of orthodox rock arrangements.

The Groovebox described their appearance best as ‘twee’. They look like they’re in the first year of college, nervous because girls don’t quite understand them yet and really earnest. Their set started off with said apprehension. They took about two songs to get into their stride. What I liked about the opening bits of their set was that each instrument seemed measured. Apart from slight jitters, the ‘collective’ made the parts count. Particular standouts were the bass and the sarang.

They reached the peak of their performance by the third song ‘Gates Of Dawn’. Though the dude on English vocals needs a lot of work, he pulled the song through its verse and the Hindustani vocalist took it from there. The next few songs plateaud in excitement, and from then on, it was all downhill.

What I gather from this performance is the band’s difficulty in figuring when to stop. Sure, with an eight member act there are bound to be excesses. But where a band like Something Relevant can get away with improvisation, Advaita can’t because the songs are very structured. The result was longer-than-two-minute outros and repititive arrangements.

John Leckie’s going to have a hard time getting as many songs recorded with Advaita. The danger is that Advaita could turn into Euphoria, but the potential to come out with something unique, given the band’s calculated form as displayed in the first quarter of their set, is pretty good.

Indiecision: B-

Indigo Children

As repeated several times in the Soundpad sessions video edits, the band changed their name because the sound, and members, have changed.

It was surprising then that the band decided to start Sunday night’s gig with ‘What Every Kid Wants’, a song demoed and performed by the band’s original lineup. The addition of Rahul Sainani on guitars, however, has visibly, and audibly, shown effects. The sound is far fuller, even if all Sainani does is step on the flanger.

And it’s true, their sound has changed. There’s now a lot more Wolfmother and a lot less Arctic Monkeys. Some Franz Ferdinand and Klaxons as well for good measure. Which is not to say that the band has entirely lifted ideas from their better known British Commonwealth counterparts. The Children are slowly but surely taking these sounds and making them their own. ‘High Priestess’ for example takes a very familiar refrain and adds to it Nikhil Rufus’s driving bass and Sainani’s persistant phaser creating something, though not entirely unique, creative enough to fall into the Indigo Children radius.

Apart from the music, the rest of the act is pretty much the same. Crowd engaging chit-chat is left to a minimum with just the songs being introduced and a whole lot of empty space in between tracks. But that’s their thing, and as long as the music is rewarding, the frills are just, well, frills.

With an intensely tight routine and the beginnings of a new creative direction, the future looks bright for Indigo Children.

Indiecision: B+