Posts Tagged ‘Vishal J. Singh’
Amogh Symphony Interview
2014 was a good year for the independent music scene in India. One of my favorite release from an Indian band was “Vectorscan” by Amogh Symphony. The release saw the band moving away from technical metal and into “Avant garde” territory. I spoke to the band about the album, how Andrey became part of the and also what the future hold for the band
How does it feel now that ‘Vectorscan’ has been released?
Jim – Like a load was lifted off my back. Now, i can practice my doublebass for fun, not to achieve BPM for a track. It is no fun to have tempos that i cannot play at the time to record. It makes practicing like work, which is detrimental to the creative process.
Andrey – A huge relief. Like it or not, the music finally shaped itself. Creating the album was no easy task for all of us.
The storyboard for the album is quite extensive. How long have you been working on the story for?
Andrey – The story has just begun.
Vishal – The story was written in 2 months but later I had to do a lot more research on it. Especially with tantric mantra style rhymes as song titles/chapter titles. This time, I had to treat it like a proper storyboard with images and visuals. Overall, 3 years of work.
With Jim in USA, Andrey in Russia and you in India. What was the songwriting process like?
Jim – Slow for final arrangements. Vishal is the kind of guy who can create a 5 minute song based on a 7 second drum loop i send him. With all parts in an hour or two. It’s hard to get Vishal to stop changing things. Vishal sent me new song demos, i did listen to them more than once and they went to my trash folder. I learned from TQHC when i would spend two weeks on 4 measures, and i was finally ready to record the next day, that night Vishal would send a new version with that section deleted.
This album did not have re-composing and fitting the drums to the music like TQHC, by chopping them up, changing, adding bass drum parts, starting the groove on th & of 3 etc…
All the songs were set in stone before i hit record. Vishal did change things and recompose, but that was done on top of the drum tracks.
Andrey – Lots of communication, countless phone calls, emails, messages, thousands of shared ideas to be refined later. And thousands of hours, obviously. No random noise. Focused work.
Vishal – lol. I know you guys hate me so much for doing that. You heard them, Peter.
How did Andrey become part of the band?
Jim – Andrey was wandering around the My Little Pony section of Toys R Us crying. We followed him around. Then he found a plastic xylophone and played an incredible etude. Vishal and i looked at each other and immediately bought the giant My Little Pony Stable Playset and a couple of ponies for Andrey. We never saw such an excited guy. He then ran and grabbed a Barbie guitar and played Eruption note for note. We knew that we had found the third member.
Andrey – Started as a new member of RPL, wrote some unusual extra parts, which Vishal liked.
Vishal – I discovered Andrey through Mark during Robots Pulling Levers guest sessions. Andrey amazed all of us with his playing and ideas and I knew that I found the third puzzle of Amogh Symphony lol and Jim made up the story because he is a genius.
How long did the recording process for the album take?
Jim – About a year.
Vishal – About a year? Aye, more than a year.
Andrey – More than a year. Too many ideas we’ve gone through. We could write an entire discography based on leftovers.
How difficult was the recording process for the album? I believe an entire recording of the album was scrapped.
Jim – That is correct. But the amount of songs were more than one album. It was like two albums. And each one had a different style. We knew something was wrong when Vishal had some Irish-like folk song violin parts.
Actually there is a bass line that survived the cut and made it to the album. Except it is not shifting time signatures like a broken record.
Andrey – ‘Finding the right sound’ for a certain idea was the hardest part for everyone. More thinking, more playing, more unique, unusual sounds.
Vishal – I took help from few recording engineers. I wasn’t happy with same old “hi-end” and “crystal clear digitally” styles of production. Same synth, same presets….never. Hence, it was a non stop search for the right sound which means even the scratch recordings were tweaked to get the basic skeleton structure.
What is next for the band? I believe you have been working on instructional videos and a DVD.
Jim – This is top secret info. Since we pissed of many fans of the metal Amogh sound, the next album is designed to piss off everyone else. As far as video, i want to do some lessons on YouTube.
Vishal – You know, that’s been going on since quite a long time but I want to make sure that I do not end up making a regular DVD video where I sit and show off same sets of guitar and production/music composition lessons. All I want is to share something that others do not and/or never shared. For example, how to make top notch music with minimal gear and cheap equipments when you are broke and cannot afford to buy those expensive gear on Youtube demo videos.
Any Final words?
Jim – Don’t blow dry your hair while taking a bath.
Andrey – Thanks for listening our music and thanks for support.
Vishal – You never know where the direction goes. No matter what, a lot of fans supported and accepted our directions that we chose. I really want to thank them all for being with us and believing in us.
Listen to ‘Vectorscan’ below
Interview with Skyharbor
Skyharbor the progressive metal band of Delhi based producer Keshav Dhar is one of the most promising acts of emerge from India recently. The band generated a lot of buzz online when it started 3 years under the “Hydrodjent” moniker. Their set at the NH7 Weekender in November last year was one of the highlights of the festival for me. Earlier this week Basick Records, a progressive Metal label from UK released their debut album “Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos” and it kicks ass. Read my review of the album here.
Find out more about the album, getting signed to Basick Records and their future plans in my interview with Keshav below
Hi Keshav, how do you feel now that “Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos” is all set for release after 3 years in the making??
Keshav: Very, very happy and proud! I feel we’ve written a solid debut record and there is nothing that I would do differently in hindsight. The album was finished around the fall last year though, so I’m quite anxious to get cracking on the next one and plan ahead for the future.
“Illusion” features Dan Tompkins (White Moth Black Butterfly, Piano, Ex-Tesseract) on vocals and Chaos features Sunnieth Revankar (Bhayanak Maut, Providence) on vocals. How did you go about writing the songs with 2 different vocalists?
Keshav:Interestingly, the album wasn’t really written with the point of view that there would be different singers for different songs, or for that matter even that all the songs would have vocals. It started out obviously instrumental since it was my solo project back then. I had always wanted to collaborate with Sunneith on some material though, so around early 2011 he recorded vocals for ‘Trayus’ and I was absolutely blown away. We proceeded to extend the collaboration with songs like ‘Aphasia’ and ‘Insurrection’. He’s a phenomenal metal vocalist with an incredible sense of phrasing and groove. Then shortly afterwards I was contacted by Dan on MySpace, and he was interested in guesting on ‘Order 66’ – which I was really excited about since that song sums up the other side of our music quite well, the more delicate and proggy side. I sent him some more material along those lines and he enjoyed it and offered to sing on that as well. One by one we ended up doing 7 songs in total. Even some songs, which were meant to be instrumental from the get go like ‘Dots’, just sounded so, so much better with his vocals that I totally gave him free reign to do whatever he pleased vocally.
Basick Records has released “Blinding White Noise: Illusion and Chaos“. How did you get signed to them?
Keshav:My good friend Aaquib from Rock Street Journal was in contact with Barley and Lisa at Basick, and he put us in touch. I described the plans and long term vision I had for the project with Barley, and we came to an agreement very quickly. The whole deal took literally just a couple of weeks to sort out.
Skyharbor’s only live performance so far has been at the NH7 Weekender in November last year. Tell us a bit about the whole experience.
Keshav: Ahh, where do I begin! What an absolutely fantastic festival and experience. First of all there was Anup coming all the way from the US to rehearse and play with us, then the actual rehearsals which was an incredible feeling as I jammed these songs that had thus far only been sitting on a computer, in a room with a full band! Then the festival itself – awesome organization, awesome crowds, awesome sound, awesome lineups – I can’t say enough, how much fun we had at the NH7 Weekender.
From “Hydrojent” to “Skyharbor” what has been your most memorable moment so far?
Keshav:There are so many – the numerous wonderful collaborations, all the good things being said about us online and in the press, etc – but I would say our getting signed to Basick Records was really very special to me. I hugely respect and look up to them and the bands on their roster, and it’s extremely inspiring to know that they enjoy our music enough to want us in their family.
You were in Another Vertigo Rush for a short period before the band split up. Have you been in any other bands previously?
Keshav:Another Vertigo Rush haven’t disbanded actually – just on an extended hiatus. We’ll start writing again when the time is right, but we all have our individual priorities very clear right now. Besides that, a couple of jam bands in college which was fun but nothing serious.
You are also a much sought after producer, what projects are you currently working on?
Keshav:Heaps of projects at the moment! I’m producing Dan’s solo EP for his project ‘White Moth Black Butterfly’ which is wonderful ambient mood music, Limit Zero’s (Bangalore) full length album – kickass prog metal band! – and an ethnic folk trio called Just Ittefaq. I’m also producing singles and EPs for a lot of other bands, but these are the real ‘bulk’ projects as of now and the most notable.
Now that you have a live line up in place, will there be any more gigs in support of the album release?
Keshav: We still aren’t quite there as a live lineup yet, and we will make announcements about this in due time, but there are definitely plans – keep an eye on our facebook page for updates!
Have you started writing for the second album? What can we expect from the new material?
Keshav:There is some material left over which didn’t make it to the first album because I couldn’t finish up the songs in time, but these ideas are the basis on which I’m going to start writing for the second record. I also have a lot of ideas which I’ve yet to record or demo, and I plan to take a couple of weeks off sometime soon and start writing earnestly. It’s too early still to judge what kind of shape the second album will take, but I can say that the writing process is starting somewhat from where we’ve left off last time.
Final words?
Keshav: Thanks for having me on here, and a ton of thanks to you and all our wonderful fans for all their support and patience! Keep those awesome messages rolling in on our social networks, and look out for some more exciting news from us soon!
Stream/Buy “Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos” here