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Rocking musical collage
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Alternative, psychedelic, psychotic, distortion, ambient guitar soundscapes, prog rock, didjeridoo, trumpet, Kazakh news grabbed from shortwave radio, auto horns, Jimi, G’N’R, Ugly Kid Joe and a funky visual trip. It’s Lounge Piranha. ANAND SANKARlistens
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Just jamming Lounge Piranha comprise accomplished musicians feeding off each other’s strengths
I walk into a conversation. I can immediately feel passion. Visually it gets more interesting, Abhijeet Tambe with his wavy hair and piercing eyes, Kamal Singh nose-ringed and hooded, a quiet Rohan Ramesh and a round-eyed bubbly Archana Prasad. Missing are the equally colourful George Mathen and Pervez Rajan. Collectively they are Lounge Piranha (LP), possibly one of the best music acts out of Bangalore. “We were not on the same wavelength to start out with but found common ground in LP.” It began as impromptu jam sessions which were full of “little shyness and small, small flirtations”. After being thrown out of the jam room by the police for being too noisy, today it is a unique acoustic and visual identity. Accolades have included performances at Strawberry Fields, and the 2007 Toto Funds the Arts award for music. “What separates us from the rest? We are not in a hurry – for gigs, to play or write songs. In fact for our first six months there were no voices, just instruments. It is the sound first and there is no philosophy to it. There might be a small structure, a rough idea of a tune and it becomes something with time,” they say. Critical to the identity is the rare coming together of a group of musicians who are quite accomplished with their instruments. Kamal says he draws influences from Guns ’N’ Roses, Ugly Kid Joe, Radiohead, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and a lot of alternate music. He is famous for a playing style that uses “lots of different kinds of tuning to suit convenience.”
Rohan juggles studying medicine and his Warwick bass. Having previously played at church and with Synapse, he confesses: “I don’t know much of guitar, only bass.”
The well-travelled Abhijeet has a degree in Music Engineering from Miami and was part of a band in Texas. He strums funk and reggae in a style that uses delay and an e-bow, a device that is like a violin bow for a guitar.
George comes from a progressive rock background and has drummed for a lot of bands. An artist, his impressions are very visible on the website and the walls of the watering hole, Ghetto, in Colaba, Mumbai.
Pervez picked up the didjeridoo while on a trip to Papua New Guinea and Australia. He started making noises and “soon learnt how to use the sound.”
After being to one of LP’s live performances, the reason for their popularity is quite apparent. There is no stage act or set list. There are only original compositions, “enough now to fill two albums.” It is just one big jam with the band feeding off the audience accompanied by a very slick audio visual slideshow. Not a single LP number “is the same when played twice.” “There is no play list. What we end up playing is entirely based on the mood and we progress to the next song based on that. Sometimes it is pure energy and sometimes pure ambience.”
LP has been billed as having “international quality”. The band say they are quite serious about landing a record deal and demo CDs are already doing the rounds. But as usual there is no “hurry”, there is contentment in just jamming together.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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