Question: What do stinky feet, strange sounds and Saarang have in common? Since the Slumdog Millionaire trip is still very much in vogue, I suppose swiping the game’ s format might just spice it up a notch.
Here goes nothing: A. IIT-M’ s toilets B. Opeth without a / c
C. The letter‘ S’ D. A near obscure local band called E-Flat And if you did go with D as your final answer, then you might just be lucky enough to have landed yourself a no-expenses paid trip to Studio MahalingaTM for an exclusive front row performance; and if you put on your best behaviour chances are you might just land yourself a tall glass of chilled beetroot juice( which unless told beforehand can quite easily pass for grape, no fingers crossed!) Which was pretty much how my evening, with the band that had recently made some impressive headlines, began. Stories of struggling bands are not uncommon but the rise of underdogs has never ceased to catch people’ s attention; which is pretty much the story of E-Flat, which has been in existence for the last three odd years. As many such endearing tales go, this story too began in a school; Don Bosco to be accurate, when founding members Roshan Thomas and Blumen Rajan, two guitarists, began doing the school cultural circuit,“ He( Roshan) was the Cultural Secretary and my first time on stage was with a tambourine.” That proved reason enough to make him master his chosen instrument, the bass guitar. The band’ s name, though not musically irrelevant, was still a point of interest personally, seeing as how normally there are intricate and winding explanations behind, within, above and around the name!“ Back in school, I’ d have to de-tune my guitar to the E-flat scale for quite a few songs. So when a band came into existence, the name just stuck,” explained Roshan.“ These days though, our songs are more on C-sharp somehow,” quickly quipped keyboardist Kedharnath, who joined the outfit a little over two years ago. Three years is an eternity for bands to last and the band has in no way been spared of frequent line-up changes. Shortcomings in their mathematical skills and confusion over the number of his predecessor( s) between Kedhar and Roshan, of‘ professional’ colleges Crescent and SVCE respectively, led to discrepancies over exactly how many people have been in and out of the band, over the years. Tally of drummers though has been safely agreed on as a whopping seven; a fact left undisputed by latest entrant, Sounder Rajan; a professional drummer and instructor at the Unwind School of Music, who joined the band in December last year. Admirably, this is probably the first band that has warm regard for their previous members which was evident from the way they spoke of their previous drummer, Saikat; a bong with a penchant for learning Tamil obscenities! So what sets E-flat apart, beyond their demure stage personalities and regulation hair styling? It’ d have to be their music, hands down. Why, you might ask? Simple, the last time I watched them play I ran out of fingers trying to keep tabs on the number of styles used in their music. Facebook proved a better enumerator, listing their genre as,( try this on for size), Arabic-Metal-Techno-Carnatic-Funk-Soft Rock. Difficult as it is to describe their music, I have to say that it is unique to the hilt. Who else would dare list‘ confused’ to describe their stuff? Imagine mystic Arabic strains melting into Carnatic chants washed down with a dash of techno topped off with a liberal slice of soft mellow emotion and you’ ve got yourself a flattering cocktail!“ We have six playable electric tracks and ten acoustic arrangements and are really looking to putting in some time at the studio,” said the multi-faceted keyboardist. Random acts of appreciation do contribute to inspiration. A statement that rings true for the band, for in times when acceptance was meager, an engineering student from IIT who wrote to them and a female student from VIT, moved to intense emotion, were testament to the band’ s music and identified so much with the lyrics that they stand tall in the quartets memory for having spurred them on. Respect too, has been difficult to come by. With hardly anything noteworthy to their credit, the band did seem overdue for a much deserved break. MCC’ s Deepwoods proved