Posts Tagged ‘Progressive rock’
Rainburn on Vignettes
Bangalore progressive rock act Rainburn are back on the podcast. This time around they give an inside look at their creative process for their upcoming album Vignettes. Hear directly from Vats, Neilroy, and Riju on how they developed the concept, wrote the songs, and captured the live energy in the studio. Get the stories behind the singles “Outrage” and “Party People.”
Track list
Rainburn – Outrage-Seeking Generation Z Brain
Rainburn – Party People
Imperial Triumph – Merkurius Gilded (ft. Kenny G and Max Gorelick)
Stream/Download Vignettes – https://rainburn.bandcamp.com/album/vignettes
Rainburn interview
Bangalore based progressive rock act Rainburn are setting out on the “Make Us Rich Now” tour this week along with Diarchy and Mocaine.
I spoke to band members Vats and Riju about the tour, touring in India in 2022 and also about their upcoming album “Vignettes”. Tune in to find out more.
Tickets and venue details for the tour – https://linktr.ee/MURNTour
Check out Rainburns’s music – https://rainburn.bandcamp.com
Rainburn live picture by Anurag Tagat
Update: Here’s a picture I took from the Mumbai leg of the tour
Rainburn
Rainburn are a Progressive Rock band from Bangalore, India. In November last year, they released an Ep titled “Resignify” consisting of five reworked tracks from their album “Insignify”. I spoke to front man Vats Iyengar about the EP, their approach towards it, Progressive Rock and much more.
This interview was conducted before the EP release, but is now finally online because of Life and everything that comes with it.
Read the interview on The Metal Wanderlust
Tool – Fear Inoculum review
Let me start off by stating that I am a regular Tool fan, far from a fanboy. Fear Inoculum is easily the most awaited metal release of this year, if not for the past 5 years. I was not expecting Tool to release an album this year and I thought it was all a joke and that the band was just trolling us. Soon after a release date came the release of the first single, Fear Inoculum. I was not too impressed with the track after a few listens, it sounded like a sum of the parts of their older songs with better production.
Read the review on Moshpitnation
Horns Up Podcast: Episode 26
Sutej Singh is an Indian composer / guitarist who released a superb album The Emerging, released in 2018 through Pinecone Records. A year later, we discovered him at a gig in Bombay, part of a tour that celebrates the first year anniversary of the album. The boys speak to Sutej about his roots, his journey, and his plans for the future.
Horns Up Podcast: Episode 23
On this week’s epidode, we are join by someone who does not need much of an introduction in the metal sphere, Dan Swano. The conversation covers his life as both musician and a producer/engineer.
Dan shares advice about the metal sound and what is an ideal mix along with stories from Edge of Sanity and even his time in Bloodbath.
Rainburn interview
Unscene promoter Bantering Ram has good taste in music, so when he recommended Rainburn – Insignify, I knew I had to listen to it. The first full length release by the Bangalore prog rockers is a concept album. The story line is well complemented by melodic riffs which result in multiple listens.
I spoke to vocalist/guitarist Vats Iyengar about Insignify, line up changes and also their upcoming tour.
You released your first album Insignify earlier this month. How does it feel now that the album has been released?
A lot of satisfaction at how well the vision and efforts of nearly two-and-a-half years have panned out. And more prominently – because I can’t sit still for too long – planning the way forward from here.
For those not familiar with the band. Do share how the present line up of the band get together?
We did a tour in late 2016 with Coshish, and less than a month before the start of the tour, thanks to the absence of any discernable work ethic in our beloved indie scene, we suddenly found ourselves without a bassist and a second guitarist. We were in a pretty tough place – if you know our music, you know it’s not something that people can just come in and nail overnight or wing their way through. Prav and I were very lucky to find Paraj and Ravi, who worked really hard over that short period of time, and the tour turned out well. They’ve been with us ever since (Paraj is part of the live line-up).
Insignify is a concept album. Do tell us more about it.
Insignify is a story about the search for significance amidst life’s inherent meaninglessness. It is centred around notions of insecurity and narcissism – two traits whose roots often lie in the need to feel special/significant. The protagonist of the story is a musician because, in my experience, performing artists are more prone to those two traits than regular people are. The choice of main character also made it easier to write from an autobiographical point of view, which makes the whole thing really honest.
What are the concept albums that have inspired you?
In no particular order, Quadrophenia by The Who, The Shaming of the True by Kevin Gilbert, Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche, and Remedy Lane by Pain of Salvation.
There were also a couple of albums that influenced me in terms of what not to do – The Wall by Pink Floyd for teaching me to not get so carried away by the concept that the music starts to feel secondary or indulgent. And Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater taught me to avoid making a concept album that’s focused more on a complicated story, and not enough on addressing or evoking what you call basic human emotions. I love both those bands but I have to say, these particular albums aren’t my favourite things by them.
What was the writing process of the album? What came first, the concept or the music?
The concept came first, although a few guitar riffs and such from different points in the past made their way into certain songs. It took a long time to fully develop the story but once the conceptual details were in place, the songwriting happened quite quickly.
The album was recorded with Thejus Nair at Eleven Gauge Recordings. What was the recording process?
Thejus is a huge part of how this album sounds, not just in terms of his role as a mix engineer but also his input on arrangements, and even things like guitar tones during pre-production. I must say this is as much his album as any Rainburn member’s. The recording process was surprisingly simple and streamlined, considering the musical breadth of the record.
What’s currently on your playlist?
Reflections of a Floating World by Elder. In the past, I never really got into much – I guess you’d call this stoner metal, but someone recommended this album to me recently and it’s great. I’ve also been listening to a fair amount of hip-hop lately.
Do you have any shows/tours planned in support of the album?
We’re touring in February in support of the album. No dates/venues finalized yet, those will come together over the next few weeks, but a tour’s happening for sure, and I hope to see everyone who’s reading this out there at the shows!
Thanks for answering all our questions. Do you have any final words?
Thanks for doing this interview. To your readers: please check out Insignify and drop us a message on our website or social media pages, letting us know what you think.
The D/A Method interview
The D/A Method are a progressive rock band from Karachi, Pakistan. I found out about the band through Patari, a Pakistani music streaming platform. The D/A Method are more progressive sound compared to Odyssey
Their recently released album The Desert Road is an engaging listen and features classical instruments. I spoke to Talha Alvie about The Desert Road, working with Bruce Soord and also their plans in the coming months.
Hi guys, you recently released your second album The Desert Road at show with Takatak. How did it go?
The show was great. We had an excellent turn out with about 500 people in the audience. It’s always special playing in front of our home crowd in Karachi and this was no exception. Takatak absolutely killed it, so it was a wonderful show overall.
For those who have not heard of you before, could you share how the band was formed.
The band was formed by Umair and Talha back in 2012. After jamming together, they wrote songs which were to become part one of our debut album, The Great Disillusion. While recording the album we added our friends Usama on vocals and Istvan on drums in 2013. This is the line up that appears on the first album. Danny, who had played bass with us in the past, joined the band in 2016 to complete the line up which has remained unchanged since then.
The Desert Road comes 2 years after the release of your previous album, The Great Disillusion. What was the writing process for the album?
The writing process for TDR was quite different from TGD as for the first time we were under a deadline in order to fit in with our producer Bruce Soord’s schedule. We had been planning on working on a four-song EP with Bruce but he suggested turning it into a full-length album. So the challenge for us was expanding this EP into a proper record in the matter of only a few months. Talha wrote the structures for four additional songs while Umair and Istvan added the final one to get us to a 9 track album. We actually recorded all of the drum and guitar parts before the vocals were finalized but as always, Usama went over the songs and added his magic touch. We only recorded the final vocals once we got into the studio to mix the album with Bruce which ultimately worked out brilliantly because we were able to get his input on vocal parts and harmonies and also have him as a guest vocalist on several songs.
The album features traditional musical instruments like the sitar and sarangi. How did they become a part of your sound?
Being from Pakistan, these traditional instruments have been a part of the music we’ve been listening to since our childhood. It just made perfect sense for us to use the sounds from these age-old instruments as an additional layer to our electric guitars, synths, and drums. The whole East-West fusion thing has been done for a long time, but for us this comes out of interest of adding textures and sounds that both contrast and complement our modern Western instruments.
The Desert Road is co-produced and mixed by Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief, Wisdom of Crowds). How did he become a part of the album?
Honestly it was just a complete shot in the dark. We’d been fans of his music for a long time and learned that he was interested in producing bands, so we shot him an email and he said yes. He definitely whipped us into shape and made sure that we were on point with everything before we got into the studio with him, which is something we probably needed at the time.
You released a music video for the track, the Desert Journey. How relevant do you think music videos are in the age of Youtube and Vimeo?
Music videos are essential. The era of instant information means that people’s attention spans are limited and a video is a great way to capture that attention. Luckily prog rock fans still value the idea of concept albums and long songs, but we’ve always felt that if we want to get our music out to a broader audience we need to put out videos. Fortunately, as fans of film ourselves, we’re willing to put in as much passion and effort into our videos as our music. We just see our videos as visual extensions of the songs themselves.
What have you been listening to lately (metal and non-metal)? Are there any acts that have inspired you of late?
Individually we’re all over the place but as a band we’ve been more interested in singer-songwriter type stuff as of late. Dallas Green/City and Colour, Jeff Buckley, Mark Kozelek to name a few. Of course the new Steven Wilson album is on the top of all of our playlists. The new Mastodon EP is pretty great as well.
What are your plans for the rest of the year? Are there any shows/tour planned in promotion of the album?
After our last show we’re probably going to lay a little low until the end of the year. We have some material that we’ve been working on which we’ll finally get a chance to make some progress on. We’ll be back on stage with hopefully a tour of Pakistan at some point in the first half of 2018.
Thanks for answering all my questions. Do you have any final words?
Thanks for the interview and thanks for supporting our music. To anyone reading this, please check out our music. Our discography is available for purchase on Bandcamp and iTunes and for your streaming pleasure on Spotify. All the best.
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