Indian Ocean has collaborated with the likes of Shubha Mudgal and Shankar Mahadevan for its latest album Tandanu. The musicians spoke to Pallavi Gupta
They have survived for more than two decades in an industry where splitting of musical bands is a norm. Ever since they embarked on this musical cruise, Indian Ocean has been on a roll. last year what kept them hooked was staging back to back concerts — they participated in Nh7 Weekender, Enchanted Valley carnival, the NMIMS Paragana fest, MICA Ahmedabad, The Rider Mania 2013 in Goa, The Chennai Music Academy. This year, they are back to business with latest album Tandanu.
“Tandanu doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a rhythmic word with no meaning. But we love the sound of this word. And what made us love it even more was that when you Google this term, links to our album pop up since this word has no concrete prior existence,” said Amit Kilam, the band’s drummer.
For this seven-track album, the band has collaborated with several artistes, Shubha Mudgal, Karsh Kale, Shankar Mahadevan, Kumaresh Rajagopalan, Pt Vishva Mohan Bhatt, V Selva Ganesh and Vishal Dadlani. “We always wanted to jam with different artistes. Four years ago we had come up with the idea of a ‘unique collaboration’. It was something on our wishlist,” said Kilam.
Each song has a story to it. “We had thought of documenting the production of songs with artistes and we took it further with creating 15-minute episodes,” he said.
The music of Indian Ocean through all these years has been indefinable. Amit, the music fusionist, explained, “Each artiste has added his style. Every track is a newer version of the traditional Indian Ocean fusion.”
The song Ghar Ho Sakte featuring Shubha Mudgal was released recently and its 15-minute making was broadcast on MTV Pepsi Indie. “We had previously thought of releasing each of our video on YouTube,” said Kilam. The channel is now showing one episode from the album every Saturday. The album will be out in market this month.