The Calcutta audience has always known its music and is well informed about it too. That the food there is so darn delicious helps notch up the entire experience!

WE LISTEN TO:

The Supersonics, Soulmate, Skrat, The Ska Vengers, Pangea, Warren Mendonsa. Why? Why else — they kick ass!

LIFE-CHANGING ALBUMS:

Uday: Quadrophenia (The Who), Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd), In Absentia (Porcupine Tree), Debut (Bjork), Us (Peter Gabriel)

Zubin: Machine Head (Deep Purple), Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd), Civilised Evil (Jean-Luc Ponty), Friends (Chick Corea), Blow by Blow (Jeff Beck)

 

Call them legends or label their music addictive. Indus Creed still rock it after all these years. Before their Bacardi NH7 Weekender gig on Sunday at Nicco Park, group members Uday Benegal and Zubin Balaporia spoke to t2.

Indus Creed will be in Calcutta after a long break. What do you enjoy most about the city?

The Calcutta audience has always known its music, right from when we first started playing there, about 25 years ago. It’s very fulfilling to play to a crowd that not only loves its music but is well informed about it too. That the food there is so darn delicious helps notch up the entire experience!

What about another Indus Creed album?

At the moment we’re putting out a series of singles. That could turn into a whole album at some point. But right now it’s one song after another. We’re enjoying the creative flow and churn in this process.

The song Fireflies, featured on your 2012 album Evolve, is there in the Rahul Khanna-Monica Dogra film Fireflies, which released on Friday. What’s the story behind the song?

Uday: I wrote and composed the song Fireflies soon after I had read a very early draft of the screenplay that Sabal Shekhawat had written and sent me. He wasn’t looking for any music at the time, merely my feedback. The story, of two estranged brothers, lingered in my thoughts for a while and led me to write the song.

Zubin: I heard Uday perform the song with his acoustic band Whirling Kalapas and felt it would work with Indus Creed. We sat and worked on it so that it would gel with the rest of the material we were doing for our album Evolve. It worked exactly as conceptualised... doesn’t always happen... and became the first single and video from the album.

When did you first meet Sabal?

Uday: Sabal is an old friend of ours, who we had met in our formative advertising music years. He and I used to talk movies a lot so I think he felt that my opinions contained some value. The movie and the song were unrelated… or so we thought, until events and circumstances proved otherwise.

The script which you read in 2012 and the final film, how different are the two?

Uday: While the final script had seen many changes since the early draft I had read, the core of the story, of two estranged brothers, remained intact. The film that was finally made found its form in a clearer and even more engaging story featuring some remarkable performances by a highly talented cast.

Finally, it’s almost 10 years since your classic Pretty Child released. How do you feel when you hear the song?

To be honest, proud as we are of the song (and the video), we’ve always been a bit baffled by Pretty Child’s success. That’s not to say that we don’t love the song. But it’s hard to be objective about your own work and we’re so closely connected to each one that we hope they all enjoy maximum reach. But it’s impossible to predict the success of any song we create. And more than that, we’d rather focus on moving ahead by writing, recording and performing new material. Onward and upward it is!

TWO DRUMMERS. ONE BAND. MONEY FOR ROPE IS READY TO BLAST BACARDI NH7 WEEKENDER, WITH T2

Though we don’t know many Indian artistes, we have it on good information through our new mate at the Indian passport-photo shop that there are lots of music fans in India who love rock,” says Julian McKenzie of Melbourne-based band Money For Rope, which will perform at Nicco Park today.

Two drummers, one band! How does that work?

We like to keep it loud and there’s no better way of doing that than having two drummers! The chaos is irresistible. There’s a group mentality we share that’s musically reinforced by the physical battery of double drums.

Why Money for Rope?

It’s an old saying, meaning something for nothing… that we first heard in a John Lennon song called Gimme Some Truth. It’s a track where Lennon rails against people selling something for nothing, promoting a facade, something fake. We like our music brave and honest, raw and heartfelt, as Lennon espouses in this song.

What do you listen to during tours?

Travelling is a mix of large periods of quiet time where you find an amount of personal space by putting on a pair of headphones and getting lost in a record. It might be something familiar and rejuvenating, or it might be something new and inspiring. Sometimes, once we’ve been in the van for a while, and maybe suffering from a lack of oxygen, we see how long we can tolerate annoying sounds on repeat. We like to check out radio stations that are nearly off the dial, anything we can find in a language we don’t understand, or anything unusual. When we’re arriving at a show, it’s theme music from cartoons, and the top ten hits from our childhood.

Away from home, what do you look forward to?

Always the food! We love Indian food and can’t wait to be there experiencing the real thing! We love getting to meet people, stay at their houses, enjoy home cooking and pinch their local food recipes. We love the way cuisine changes with the region, and, of course, that includes local beer, wine, whisky… in fact anything alcoholic. You get a great insight about people and their cultures from the way they enjoy their food and drink.

SNAP CHAT

A song stuck in your head: Mac Demarco’s Ode To Viceroy
A festival you love to play at: Austin Psych Fest
Your poison after a gig: Whisky
Something you stole from a hotel: Allegedly towels!

Mathures Paul