Tête-à-tête

The band is setting up, when you notice a man in blue settle down cross-legged onstage, with an unfamiliar, thick, long pipe across his knees. When the overhead lights go dim, the guitar gets plucked, and then a beautifully haunting tone emits from the pipe, you already know you’re in for a show, quite unlike any Indian rock act.

Lounge Piranha is a post-rock act from Bangalore (where else?). The members of the band are also artists in other mediums. But the energy they bring to the stage, to the act, to their music, is brilliantly mesmerizing.

Cluburb sat down for a chat with the band after their show at HRC. Here's what we discovered!

The man in blue is Pervez, and his instrument is an ancient 1500-year-old Australian instrument, called the Didgeridoo.

Pervez: I learned to play the Didgeridoo In Borneo, in Malaysia. I picked it up a bit there, and enough to get through Malaysian customs. They thought it was a blow device thing I could use to shoot darts at people, and kill them. And I had to play a few notes to prove that it was an instrument. I’ve been practicing with it since.

Pervez also learned the flute in Borneo. He’s also the band’s photographer, and plays the juice harp as well. Pervez isn’t the only member who’s been to Malaysia. Abhijeet, the guitarist and vocalist, was born in Malaysia.

Abhijeet: I was born in Malaysia. But I grew up in a lot of places. I went to college in Miami. I used to spend a lot of time playing cricket with the Jamaicans out there. There’s a ridiculous amount of Jamaicans in Florida.

Abhijeet also unleashes his creative energy via designing some extremely original t-shirts which he sells through pigflower.com. The band seems to contain more creativity than can be set free via their music. Pervez used to work in advertising. George draws comic and paints. His graphic novel Moonward has been selected for the prestigious Angouleme Festival in France this year.

The band has an obsession with creativity and perfection, which seems to spill over into other aspects of their lives.

Kamal: I had to go back to the Converse store six, seven times before they got me a pair that matched exactly. Every time I went back they would show me a pair whose tongue was bigger than the other, or whose laces didn’t match exactly, or the toe would be fatter than the other.

But this perfectionism is a good thing. The band prefers intimate venues, which allow greater control over the variables and the environment. This doesn’t mean they are afraid to improvise though. Piranha did a rock mashup of Choli ke Peeche and My Humps that had the crowd rioting with glee.

Rock isn’t dead, it never really was alive in India. But acts like Lounge Piranha, make it possible for one to hope that Rock will yet live, will yet thrive in India.