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 Climb
up some 69 dark steps up to a house in East Of Kailash, Delhi
and you come to a hideout. Well, Silk Route's rehearsal place.
The heady music wafts into the stairwell and gets into your
head and you just want to lurch in and chill out. It's that
kind of place. No grills on the maxi French windows. Cushions
and cushions. Little drums hang on the walls. Big drum machines
rub shoulders with masoor ki orange dal and rajma on the kitchen
shelf. There's no glass in sight. Only four laidback people
jamming. And there's music.
The most news about Silk Route, for people
who know their music, is that Atul is back. Even though he
wasn't there on their last album, Pehchaan, it seems that
he never went away. And one wonders how he ever went away-considering
that now he doesn't even want to move from the mattress on
the floor! "Yeah," he says, "I missed out on
the second album, but I feel I've never been away. These guys
used to come down to the hills where I stay and we used to
jam together there."
The other guys are all in very
vocal agreement. They all missed him. "In every way,"
says Kem, "We all have very beautiful chemistry, Atul's
absence was felt very deeply... So Atul lolls on the mattress
with his guitar, Kem is playing keyboards and the recorder
and Kenny, the new guy on the Silk Route is on drums and Mohit
is doing vocals without words... it's breathless, seamless,
endless, endless, endless... like getting drunk without alcohol.
And this goes by the deceptively dull name of practice.
`
Pehchaan, which came out in the market six months ago, was
released two-and-a-half years after their first album, Boondein.
But the next one's not going to take that long, it seems.
They are already working on it-but they are not giving away
anything just yet. Just that many of the songs are half-done
and that, "There will be more variety in the album, but
within the same sonicscape, within the same single flow...
that's the dynamics of our music..." they say. We'll
wait, we'll wait. Till October or November-or till kingdom
come.
What they have just finished doing is
the soundtrack for a digital movie called Urf Professor, which
was featured at the recent Digital Talkies festival in Delhi.
"The music went to extremes," they say. Mohit explains,
"It was a very wacky and dark comedy, and there was lots
and lots of music. There were no lyrics at all... only vocals
being used like an instrument." So how different is it
to work on an album and then work on a mini-movie soundtrack?
"Very different," they say. "The medium is
so different. For instance, in an album, you do your own visualizing
about what the song is about. But in a movie, you have a director
who does the visualizing for you. So there your freedom is
limited but the medium itself has a lot of freedom..."
Kenny is the new dimension in the
band. And they wanted him bad. Says Mohit, "We were quite
desperate for a percussionist... right after the first album
was out." And Kenny loves playing with the band. "I've
played with many bands before this, but with Silk Route I've
found somewhere I feel I belong." Hmmm.
Mohit goes back to his singing and harmonica,
saying how happy he is that four bands are coming together
for the concert in brotherhood and fraternity... and for a
good cause. The music starts again... and even the jars on
the kitchen shelves begin to sway to it. We come down the
69 steps with the music in our heads. Smoooooth. As, you know.
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