Interview: Kaav

Vypin Island boys Kaav have just released their debut three-track EP, a stellar instrumental seascape of prog rock. They make music (with DIY videos) inspired from their coastal lifestyle and the gorgeous beaches of Kochi. We speak to Syam N Pai, the band’s guitarist, about the origins of the band, their influences, inspirations, and touring plans.

How did you form the band ?
Me and Shabeer were like high school mates; we used to jam too over there. We’ve been playing about six years. We’re from Vypin Island, away from Cochin city, we didn’t know any other bands. Last year we found this guy called Arun, our drummer, we already had some tracks, then over the last few months we added more stuff.

Where do you guys play gigs? Is there a music scene in Vypin Island?
We do live shows. We have a live show on Sunday in Cochin, and we have a few more shows coming up. We practice in a jam room in Vypin, like in my house.

Are there any other upcoming bands from Vypin Island?
No, we are the only band from Vypin Island. The only other musician from here, is Baiju from Motherjane. Me and Shabeer are his students.

Personal influences.
A lot of different things – Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar, John McLaughlin, Porcupine Tree, Coldplay, Opeth, Radiohead, a lot of other bands.

Plans of a full length album?
We have seven more tracks. Seven more tracks are ready. But we want to do it with better production, we need more time to record songs with better quality. Actually you need nearly one lakh (rupees) to produce one song, and it takes a lot of time to produce a song of international quality.

Motherjane spent about four to five lakhs on their last album, which was in 2008. So if we work on it this year, the rates are going to increase. We have seven tracks recorded with our normal mic, recorded on our laptops.

How would you want to release it?
Depends, if we’re signed to a record label and they want to sell it then we’ll do that, but if we’re doing it on our own we’d give it away for free.

Touring plans?
We have been talking with some people in Bangalore, for some shows in pubs. Shows are confirmed but the dates are not yet confirmed.

What made you stick to instrumental? Are you content with being an instrumental band, would you add vocals in future?
Right now we are happy being an instrumental band, but if we find a suitable guy we may add a vocalist or any other instrumentalist. We need someone who would fit in our atmosphere, in our kind of music. So we may add something, but we don’t know. If we don’t find anyone, we’re fine as a trio.

What was it like working with Baiju Dharmajan?
We are quite near to him, we meet him like twice, thrice in a week. He’s the most humble guy we’ve seen in the music industry. He’s an ocean of knowledge, you could say. He’s a really down to earth person. He really helped us all the way through.

Do any of you have any formal or classical training?
I have learnt to play the mridangam, way back in fourth standard, just for about one year.

How old are you guys?
27.

How come the decision to form a band?
We’ve been trying to form a band, but we couldn’t find the right person to join us. We’ve been making original music for the past five or six years but we couldn’t find the right drummer, the right vocalist. Everybody wanted to do covers, we wanted to do originals.

How did you meet Arun (the drummer)?
One of our common friends, they were college mates, he said “Hey there’s this guy called Arun.” Arun was working with a website called Indiagate in Chennai, then after the recession he lost his job. (laughs) Then he was back home, in Cochin. So he listened to our music and was quite interested, and he joined the band.

What do you derive inspiration from? What inspires you to make the kind of music you do?
Life, where you live, the culture, everything, nature, hardships, things that happen to you, everything.

Check out our review of the Kaav EP, watch their Coldplay-featured/stop-motion-magical/scenic video for Daya, and listen to the excellent EP on our Kaav page.