Yogensha is the project of Abhijeet Tambe (Lounge Piranha), Rahul Giri (Sulk Station), and visual artist Bharat R Mirle. Their first public performance was at Bangalore venue Bflat last night, part of the Pigflower Presents series, playing alongside German electronica duo On The Offshore, Sulk Station, a DJ set by Nikhil Narendra (who also plays for The Bicycle Days), and Vandana Menon (visuals).

Rahul Giri, laptopist, says of the project, “We started talking about how we had a complex relationship with the city, we were looking at different aspects of the city, especially the metro – how it represents transition. The new metro that has come up, these massive structures near MG Road etc. It’s such a massive presence, and not only visibly. It creates different kinds of emotions, it’s causing a lot of displacement – not just physically, but static displacement as well. We took a few days to document the city in transition.”

Yogensha @ BFlat, Bangalore

It isn’t only video documentation, raw samples are taken out of city life and treated to create part of an experience. “Abhi records samples from noise, namaaz, traffic, chimes, etc and likes to play them in their entirety. When I take a sample, I tend to destruct it, I tend to rip it apart – it doesn’t have to be traditional or beautiful-sounding. We decided this was how we were going to work with our sound, maintain this duality, so we’d have one side that represents the city and visuals to represent the other side of the city. We’re layering things, and when we’re layering we’re manipulating. When you take something stark and pit it against some kind of emotion- it’s the same thing with audio as well. There are beautiful samples and there is destructive noise.”

Yogensha played an entirely unprepared, spontaneous set. The music appears out of reactions to the visuals, and vice versa. “Except for Abhi’s song, he’d been thinking about it for a while. We generally tend to do that, we’re in a habit of jamming spontaneously.” Check out Yogensha’s promo video below, cut together from raw footage of their initial homemade jam sessions.

Photos by Sudhanva Atri

Lineup
Avataar
Bay Beat Collective
Beginner’s Luck
Bolepur Blues
Kendraka
Los Amigos
Lounge Piranha
The Mavyns
PINKNOISE
Quark
Rajasthan Roots
Reggae Rajahs
Shaa’ir + Func (pictured)
Srinjay Banerjee Trio
Teddy Boy Kill
Tempo Tantrick

More details are available on the festival’s website.

Check out the slick-looking promo video for the festival below.

“My dad is a big music guy, he was into Hindustani classical and also stuff like The Beatles and famous bands from those times, so a good soundsystem, a good pair of speakers, a good amplifier – these were things that I grew up with,” Tambe says. “Finally in 10th or 11th grade, I attempted playing a badminton racket with seven rubber bands – it was a bit late to do things like that, but I am a late bloomer. But very quickly some guy saw this and asked me, “Do you want to play a real guitar?” And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’”

“The first concert that ever changed my life would be when I went to watch Oasis. I used to love Oasis after they released (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, and I watched them – and I hated them after that. Did it change my life? Yeah, because they were real assholes. The singer was like, we are too cool for you guys,” Tambe says, emphatically – “like fuck we are too cool for you guys! The guitarist was playing guitar, but half the time he’s playing with these patches that sound like this,” followed by a pretty funny demonstration of squee noises. “I started building up a history of bands I liked, but hated after seeing them live. Coldplay I never really liked too much, but I saw them live and that sealed the deal. U2 – I’ve been the biggest U2 fan, it was like they’re huge, they’re huge, they’re HUGE – and they’re still that good. Then this guy Bono, he did this thing – he played, and then he opened his jacket, and showed stars and stripes to the people of Texas. And it was such a move, because it was about three weeks after 9/11, it was an emotional time for America and U2 really capitalized on the emotion.”

When asked about his songwriting process, whether or not it takes a conscious effort, Tambe insists that it’s definitely not a systematic, sit-down process. “It’s changed over the years, nowadays I have a book. It was very nursery rhyme-ish before, but now this book is like an outlet – there’s paper and ink. I’m tripping, on paper and ink. When you’re bold enough to ink something, to draw something or write something, if you just keep going without thinking about what kind of a song this could become.”

“As a band, Kamal (Singh, vocalist/guitarist) has always been a real inspiration to me. The guy who organized this thing called Freedom Jam in Bangalore told me about this fucker called Kamal, and I had to go check him out. He played me a song, it was ‘Gun Song’, and I was like, “WOW!” The next Freedom Jam, I went up to him and said, ‘Hi Kamal, my name is Abhi.’ Meanwhile, George and I were jamming – also, the thing about Kamal is he’s a very, very good guitarist. He had something going on with some tabla player, and we had our band – so then we asked him to join us. So it was George, me and Kamal – in a very experimental situation. We thought, what do we need to finish this? A bassist. And then Rohan (ex-bassist) came in.”

By this time, freshly-reunited Mumbai alternative band Zero has just about finished setting up outside, and underneath the audience’s deafening chant of “Bhenchod, madarchod”, I can barely hear Tambe anymore. He continues, “Two or three years later, Rohan – who was also studying medicine at the time, and managing remarkably well, he finished his exams, he got through the worst part, and then he said, “Okay it’s time for some serious medicine, okay bye.” We had released an album, and then Rohan quit – it was a strange time for him to quit.” The opening chords of ‘Lucy’ interrupted this conversation, and Tambe abruptly got up and ran up to the side of the stage screaming “ZEROOO!!!”, clicking photos of the stage with his cameraphone.

On returning from the frenzy, he told me, “I’ve never been about long-term planning – I trip, I get up, I trip, I get up. In a really honest moment I’d say I really trip on music far more than I trip on being a musician. I actually have difficulties considering myself a musician.” I asked him if he had a full-time career planned which fell apart when he decided to be a musician, and he said, “My full-time career has been changing like a chameleon. A chameleon from hell. By a career, I assume you mean things that get you money so that you can pay rent – things like that. I also program audio for some things, I also have a T-shirt company., which you know.” Earlier this year, he had sent me a t-shirt with their Lips Lizard print, also seen at the NH7 Weekender worn by The Bicycle Days vocalist Karthik Basker.

Zero’s ‘Old Man Sitting On The Back Porch’ has begun beside us, and drowns out any semblance of communication. We stand in the wings, and soak in all the music as it falls in waves off the stage on to about 2,000 faces in the audience, and afterwards he disappears without a trace into all the madness that was the Bacardi NH7 Weekender.

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About a month ago, on holiday in London, I stumbled upon a gig at the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch. It was a Monday, which like here is not a big gig night, but maybe because the Old Blue Last is a pub run by the chaps behind Vice Magazine and Recordings, two events were on when my friends and I went by. The first was a book launch, and the second a gig headlined by a band called Wet Paint. We got there in time for Wet Paint’s set (there were a couple of supporting bands) and while the band was alright (I’ve heard Indian indie acts with a more distinct sound), the book launch was for a graphic novel. Judging the book by its cover and its title (and I should admit, price) – Hilarious Consequences, I picked up a copy.

It was only later that I realised that there was a connection between the book launch and the gig. Hilarious Consequences is by Babak Ganjei, the frontman of Wet Paint. I enjoyed the book far more than I did the gig. It’s a funny, emotionally resonant tale of quarter-life crisis in which the protagonist is a “broke, balding, hyperchondriac husband and father who wants to be responsible but is still signing on and holding out for the dream of making it with his music and record label.” But Hilarious Consequences wasn’t just a surprisingly enjoyable book, it also came with another surprise: a soundtrack. Stuck to the backcover was a CD containing tunes by Wet Paint and 10 other acts, some of whom we probably missed that night.

The Hilarious Consequences CD got me thinking about Indian indie bands and how cool it would be if our graphic novels also came with soundtracks. The most obvious graphic novel-band connection was of course, Lounge Piranha drummer George Mathen aka Appupen, the author of Moonward. Now I’m not sure if the songs on the Hilarious Consequences CD were commissioned for the graphic novel or if they were just compiled (it’s likely to be the latter) but for Appupen I thought: What a perfect fit it would have been – to have a brand new psychedelia-tinged alt-rock Lounge Piranha album to accompany Mathen’s dystopian art.

The Indian indie community is full of artists, designers, visual jockeys, dancers, theatre peeps and filmmakers who work together with musicians. But it’s mostly the artists, designers, VJs and dancers who add another creative dimension to the musicians’ work. How come there hasn’t been much music inspired by art or dance?

The last time I could think of a musician roped in to create work for another art form was when Anuvab Pal got Sidd Coutto to do the background music for his play 1-800-India. To me, it’s strange we haven’t heard more Indian indie in plays. A lot of the folks seem to know each other.

Maybe it’s because the process of creating new music takes a fair amount of time than say painting something on the spot, or in the case of VJs, skillfully putting together a montage of appropriate visuals. Perhaps the compilation/multi-artist route would better. What if the next time The Wall Project guys decided to paint a stretch of road, five bands are told about the event a couple of weeks in advance, and that kicks off a series of Wall Project gigs? Sure, they wouldn’t know what people are going to paint, but The Wall Project is a well-established concept, and past events could serve as inspiration to acts.

Or how about a Astab Deboo contemporary dance recital with new music by Midival Punditz? I’d pay good money to see that. A PINKNOISE EP inspired by a Sarnath Banerjee strip? A Sridhar/Thayil spoken-word-jazz-blues-funk-mash-up to soundtrack the next staging of the Indian adaptation of The Vagina Monologues? The possibilities… are endless.

Images from Hilarious Consequences by Babak Ganjei.

November 3 – Trincas, Kolkata:
Cactus
Frosty Lemons
Cynical Recess
Deenga

November 10 - D’Ultimate, Mumbai.
Hipnotribe
Para Vayu
Split
Zedde
Paridakshinam

November 18 – Attitude, Delhi.
Advaita
Phunk
Anvesanah
Tantra

November 25 - Xtreme Sports Bar, Bangalore.
Aurko
Lounge Piranha (pictured)
Vinapra
Ek

Pics: Prateek Biswas, from this gig.