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Baiju Dharmajan is set to release his debut album The Crossover in the third week of May. The guitar shredder from Kochi has been prepping for his debut since he went solo last year, and has released a montage of tunes from the upcoming record (below). Dharmajan has also invested a lot of time producing the debut album of instrumental prog rockers Kaav (stream here), taking advantage of his experience producing the first two Motherjane albums – Insane Biography (2001) and Maktub (2008).

We caught up with the Mallu guitarist to find out what we can expect from the album

It might be mid of next month, I mean most probably during the third week of May. The mastering is over and it’s ready now and we are working on the cover design. Regarding the title, it was (a) little difficult, especially as it is an instrumental album. But finally I have decided to call the album The Crossover.

… About life after Motherjane and Wrenz United and working on collaborative projects

Yeah, life is good man. Now, I am engaged with band practice and planning promotions but I do have some other collaborations with different artists and I am very much in to my production work for Cochym.

… What we can expect from Dharmajan in the future.

Presently the most important thing is promoting my album and my new band. At the same time I would love to share my experience and music with the upcoming guitarists and musicians as that’s the idea behind the guitar clinics. We had planned the whole thing one year back but unfortunately that didn’t work because of my schedule and I was stuck in the studio for a while. But this time, definitely, we are commited to make it happen.

Stream Dharmajan’s album montage below.

The guitarist also featured in the ninth episode of The Dewarists alongside multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer Karsh Kale, and traditional Kerala percussionist Njeralathu Harigovindan in the sleepy town of Angadipurram, Kerala (watch here). Currently, he is part of a collective known as Kashmir which he co-founded with Sanjeev Thomas. He has also collaborated with John Antony of jazz fusion experimental band Karnatriix and with classical violinist Harikumar Sivan and his brainchild BlueFire. Dharmajan is also in the process of setting up an initiative called Guitar Guru, where he aims to support budding guitarists and enthusiasts with regular national level guitar clinics and tutorial videos.

Feel the power of Dharmajan in this video of his performance at HRC, Mumbai.