The Indie Of The Year is the Indian independent artist or associate whose creative and entrepreneurial work was the most impressive in 2010. The nominees for Indie Of The Year are

B69
It’s no surprise that three of our five nominees for Indie of the Year are venues. After the close of Razzberry Rhinocerous, Mumbai’s metal bands were forced to go back to playing gigs at college festivals and occassional gigs from at music shops. B69 brought great sound and a great venue to a grimy locality, the perfect combination for what could well become a definitive Mumbai live music venue. New Razz? No way. New scene? Definitely.

Swarathma
Winners of 2009′s Indie of the Year, Bangalore folk act Swarathma make last year look so laidback – becoming unquestionably the most busy band of 2010. After touring the UK last year, the band headed for an Asia Pacific tour hitting Australia and Singapore. Toward the end of the year, the band set out on a tour of the innards of South India playing 10 dates nonstop over a span of about two weeks. Through their months of straight touring, the band kept meticulous record of their travels and experience and published them in a set of tour diaries online. Apart from touring, the band maintains a strong socially conscious ethic, and uses their music as a platform to address bigger issues. This year, the band collaborated with songstress Shubha Mudgal on a song commissioned by the Global Water Challenge – and released a music video with the intention of spreading awareness about the water shortage/sanitation crisis in the world. They also created the novel concept of Action Replay gigs – playing one free gig in aid of a charitable organization, for every sponsored show they played. They played gigs at the Sumanahalli Leprosy and HIV Rehab Centre, and at a blind school in Pune, among others. Swarathma went a step beyond playing regular gigs all over the country, they participated in a number of  interesting collaborations with bands they admired and international artists. In short, awesomesauce.

Zenzi Mills
When Zenzi Mills shut in October, Mumbai lost one of its most unique venues. It’s like everything that was unacceptable at the posh Blue Frog next door, was acceptable at Zenzi Mills. You could perhaps say the same for Zenzi in Bandra, but unless you were among the first ten people standing right in front of the performing act, you could barely say or hear the act. Zenzi Mills combined its suburban counterpart’s love for experimentation with the right logistics. Perhaps no other venue in Mumbai will ever boast of hosting gigs that attempted to recreate the vibe of both Woodstock or The Velvet Underground’s performances at The Factory; and an event so abstract, and off-kilter that the best words they found to described were “The Art of Noise”.

Blue Frog
Since it opened in Mumbai in December 2007, Blue Frog has had to deal with a number of fairly strong accusations: they’re overpriced, elitist, and don’t “really” support the scene. Well this year it seemed like the club – widely regarded as the best music venue in the country – decided to address at least some of that criticism by hosting, from April, a regular metal night and a singer-songwriter night, catering to two genres that have plenty of supporters but barely any performance space. In September, they started the “Early Set” a series of gigs (mostly by singer-songwriters) at 7.30pm, which meant that if you happened to be a poor student/journalist-type and always got there before the 9pm entrance charge kicked in, you were entertained during your wait for the main show at 10pm.

The Raghu Dixit Project
This past year, Raghu Dixit become the posterboy of the DIY philosophy that is so frequently bandied about in Indian indie circles. He quite literally put his money where his mouth is, and invested lakhs of money to play a series of showcases around the world. He says he’s still “two summers away” from becoming an international headline act, but he’s well on his way. He played such prestigious stages as Womad, got rave reviews in publications such as The Guardian and appeared on popular UK music TV Later… With Jools Holland. Raghu Dixit’s story is a lesson for every act that blames everything from Bollywood to poor music infrastructure for their inactivity. The Raghu Dixit Project proved that if you’ve talent, and grit, you will be heard – no matter which country, and what language you sing in.

And the Indie Of The Year is

The Raghu Dixit Project.

They’re releasing more videos, of this gig and other underground sessions recordings on their Facebook page. Check out part 1 of ‘Howl’ below.

“It’s going to be more of a bar atmosphere and the attention will be shifted from the music to the food.”

Mumbai Mirror reports that the Bandra outlet will be converted into a simple bar and restaurant while their branch in Lower Parel is allegedly being sold to a third party who will decide its fate. Three of the resident DJs also quit recently. Emiliano Collazo, consultant for the brand, says, “We haven’t signed any papers yet, but it is my responsibility to tell my staff that changes might take place. if the deal is going through, we will ink it on Thursday.”

The Lower Parel venue, one of the three main live venues in Mumbai, has seen a host of offbeat, edgy gigs and album launches and open mic nights, has been known for their excellent resident DJs and has always been open to promoting new talent.

There is no mention of this on the Zenzi Mills Facebook group, so all we can do is take Mumbai Mirror’s word for it, which is always best taken with a pinch of salt. However, the article is accompanied by a photograph of a demolished portion of Zenzi Bandra, so it’s not looking too good.

Spook fans filled the upstairs room of Zenzi Mills on the night of September 14 for the launch of the Mumbai band’s debut EP Underwaterseabird, which was surprising considering Spook is a band that’s been around for barely a few months. It was their last gig with their original bassist Sonal Lama before he left to pursue an MBA; the cause of much mushiness towards the middle of the set.

Bandra girls and south Bombay boys hide in dark alleyways.

The set opened with a one-man acoustic band called SlowDownClown, reminiscent of an endearingly off-key Counting Crows. He played a set of five songs which included ‘Say Nothing’, ‘Heartstrings’, ‘Just A Coincidence’, and ‘Leaving America’, a song he wrote five years ago. He also played a brief interlude which he asked the audience to name. He stood there in the centre of the room with a hat and a harmonica, delivering locally flavoured lyrics (“Bandra girls…”) with an Adam Duritz-y strain to his voice. SlowDownClown’s EP (on Meteorik Records) releases at the end of the month.

Inititally, I was thrown off a little by Spook’s soundcheck – the vocalist with teeth gritted like General Specific, started out sounding Scott Stapp-ish (Creed/”My relationship with Christ has made changes in my life”). Through the first half, they played songs like ‘The Way’, ‘Three Screwdrivers And A White Bikini’ (a song about a drunk person on the beach), the death-themed ‘Now Imagine’, the uninventive ‘Winter Rain’, a minimal song written by the bassist called ‘Crayons’, and the rest of their EP set. The band left a carton of their CDs in a bag, following the ‘pick one up and pay what you want’ system that fed off the ardent scene-supporting-fan-love that filled the room, with people mostly dropping in hundred rupee notes for the EP.

Spook had all the energy and fullness of an emo-alt Jack’s Mannequin-ish act, only violin-driven instead of piano; a post-grungy quality that saw them confidently stride through a reasonably prosaic set. The violinist is what made the band suddenly come so alive, in spurts through every song. The second half of their set saw them brilliantly covering ‘Billie Jean’ with reverberating vocals, which was one of the defining moments of the night. A cover of Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody’ had every person in the crowd singing along, people lining the sides of the room and sitting on the floor and everyone – scrunching their eyes up and singing. There was also a mostly meh cover of Porcupine Tree’s ‘Lazarus’, and an original called ‘Musings’, with Feeder-like bursts.

Spook’s EP launch was a shaky outing for a band that has largely unimaginative, post-college-rock material, but efficient live performance chops. However, to put things in perspective, I overheard, “Man, the Hard Rock gig was so much better.”

Indiecision: C+

The gig opened with one-man acoustic act Slow Down Clown, who played a five song set. His own EP is scheduled to release in a couple of weeks.

The first half of Spook’s set consisted of the five-song EP. The set included the songs

‘Three Screwdrivers and a White Bikini’
‘The Way’
‘Now Imagine’
‘Crayons’
‘Funky Monkey’
‘Winter Rain’

This was the band’s last gig with their original bassist Sonal Lama. Stay tuned for a full review of the gig.