BAND OF THE MONTH

How do you think your music and sound has evolved over the years? With evolution of technology the medium with which we translate our imagination to sound has been changing constantly. That added with our developing understanding of self and each other, let's us define and sometimes push our boundaries for better expression of our ideas.

Your newest single, “Rab Raakha” is described as a “poetic ode to self-discovery.” What message do you hope to bring across with this song? While you look for yourself, life gives you situations that resemble a trust fall. The belief that the ones who love you, your family & your friends, are being protected by someone up above (who/whatever you believe in), can free you from the chains of worry that hold you back from taking that leap of faith.

Your music has always had a very specific aesthetic to it. What goes into producing songs like that? What kind of tech do you use? We make music with one intent , whatever sounds good for the song. We compose and produce music simultaneously so we always know what the song is shaping up to be. We use a bunch of synth sounds from the Nord , Moog sub 37 and sounds from a lot of libraries. We use PRS guitars, Gibson bass, Roland Spd sx , Pearl drums and Istanbul cymbals.

Every band has its creative differences, and these have the potential to create conflict. As a five-member band, how do you deal with these differences in ideas when it comes to song-writing, performing or just your music in general? Over the years we have learnt to separate the idea from the person. There's immense trust in each other's ideas. Not being dismissive of someone's opinion and checking our ego at the door before entering the studio helps us minimize conflict and focus solely on the music.

You’ve described your music as “poetry with rock”, and there’s a strong emphasis on poetic lyrics within your music. Tell us about some poets whose works would make good lyrics to a rock song. People have turned Kabir dohas and Bulle Shah poems into rock songs. On the other hand, pick up songs by the likes of Gulzar sahab, he's written poetry in so many genres. Rock as a genre isn't confined to a certain emotion only. From love to people's frustrations, it caters to all and beyond. Poetry is the quality of these expressions and not just a cluster of beautiful words by celebrated poets.

If you could pick one artist as your band’s singular source of inspiration. Who would you pick? It would be hard.. we can give you five.

Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, Alterbridge, Anderson Paak and Billie Eilish.

If you could change one thing about the music industry in India, what would it be? The music industry is moving towards a more accountable and data driven industry which is great for artists across the board, but what is lacking is an awareness of these choices, as artists we would like to change the understanding in the industry towards the copyrights and royalty share involved in music making, so that other artists realize the potential in releasing their music.

The Importance of an SSL

XL Desk in Your Studio

Today we thrive in an incredible time with very affordable hardware and software tools. With all of the software-based tools and technological advances that we are experiencing, why would anyone bring an analog desk back? Consoles (and hardware in general) are limited, because you have what you have and no more. Most of us with DAW already start out with dozens of plug-ins or beyond that, and with computers becoming absolute rocket ships of processing, there’s almost nothing stopping us from throwing endless tools and options at our projects. Some find this confusing, others find it helpful but sometimes, it can be an absolute waste of time. For example if you only had 16 EQs to use, do you change the way you record or do you decide that a track doesn’t even need EQ in order to preserve that EQ for another track that definitely does need it? Analog Consoles Most of us make music because we love it, not because someone is paying us to. Since it’s a labor of love, we come back to projects again and again, remixing, reediting, retracking, adding new plug-ins or gear, etc., rather than just calling it finished and moving on. When a console like the XL-Desk doesn’t have recall or automation, there is no saving your project and coming back later. Sure, you can photograph the knob and fader positions or try to recall it from memory, but it’s not practical to think that you will do either as you switch from one song to the next. If you want to move on from this project, you need to be done! The Importance of an SSL- XL Desk: • The XL-Desk as we’ve already mentioned houses an inbuilt 500 Series chassis, but it isn’t hardwired. It’s got its own patch points that can either be jumped right to the board or routed out to a patchbay. • A button on each channel brings it into the signal path or you could just as easily patch a different piece of gear into that

point, giving you two inserts on each channel lending a lot of versatility. • With the 500 Series chassis, you can tailor the sound of the console to be what you want. • SuperAnalogue, the technology behind SSL’s flagship products, is meant to be transparent and clean, so it makes sense to drop in whatever modules you want for color. • Great if you love vintage Neve-style EQs on guitars and vocals. • Great for an API tone on your drum bus • Great for SSL compression on your mix bus • At the press of a button, it becomes a box of crayons, and you get to choose the colors which are imposed onto individual channels or mix buses. • The workflow of this board is unbelievably flexible with both cue mixing and talkback built in so it could just as easily be used for tracking. • This board is so fun, as we often just want tools to help take the music out of our head and simply get it into the real world and if there’s a tool that can help us do that more fluidly, more efficiently, more creatively, and in a more fun and inspiring way, then this is the tool for that. Last but not at all least, we generally play and create music because we like the sound coming from our system and feeling more creative while operating that system is definitely something worth pursuing. The XL-Desk delivers so much as it is clearly meant to be part of a DAW-based workflow, built to leverage the power of computer-based music production without sacrificing any of the benefits of an analog workflow.