Author Archives: Sharanya Nair
I’d had a beautiful Saturday leading up to the Soulmate gig and I suspect it was because I’d had an evening at my current favorite venue for an all-time favorite band to look forward to. I wasn’t planning on making it for Boomarang but decided that it wouldn’t hurt to watch a band I hadn’t seen live yet. As I walked into the joint, there was already a sizable chunk of people screeching and grooving to the unmistakable sounds of bluesy rock; I’d just had my first taste of Boomarang. Boomarang is a four-piece ensemble from Aizwal that has blues, folk, rock and electronic influences as well. Their bio is quite interesting, with performances at familiar…
This review isn’t going to be a long drawn out affair because, frankly, I’m not a fan of prolonging the agony. The Phoenix gig at HRC Bangalore, showed promise because they followed Thursday night acts that have been in more than a few good books. In the current musical atmosphere – the Indian music scene blossoming as it is with bands attempting to re-invent themselves with each album, it’s difficult to appreciate or even stomach the thought of a band sustaining itself with a cover-oriented approach. But there’s a silver lining to everything, I assume. Phoenix is a crew of five – singer Ruben, bassist Lokhi, percussionist Badri, guitarist Keith and Ankita who sings and plays the keys….
Something that I have learnt over the years about Indian musical events, especially those that have live music, is that they never seem to start off at the scheduled hour. I walked in at 10:30 sharp, on that lazy Saturday morning, into the Big Junction Jam Festival arena in Palace Grounds and was greeted by Swarathma, at work on their sound check. A quick round of introduction with Karan Karthik (from The Live Gig) revealed that their sound check started an hour back. Well, it continued for the next hour or so, while I lazily roamed around the place. After what seemed like an eternity (but was really a couple of hours), Bangalore based Old School…
