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Antarman
With heady folk influences of Baul, Bhatiyali, Sylheti, Bihu and a fair share of Indian classical music woven into present-day arrangements, Antarman’ s self-titled debut album could be looked at, as a guided tour of some rare and rather refreshing sounds of Eastern India.
Antarman or the inner conscience that connects us through a variety of emotions to the unaltered truth of oneness- is the plain and simple foundation stone for this trio. The act is primarily an outcome of pure passion for music, conceived and created by Rahul Mukherjee, Randeep Bhaskar and Pooja Shankar collectively.
The Score Magazine
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Why the name Antarman? Any story that you ' d like to share with us?
We all have an individual takes on how this came together, but when it came together all our ideas were comfortably merged into one unique entity – Antarman.
Rahul- The initial concept of Antarman initially originated in my mind, during the time Pooja was touring with singer Shilpa Rao and when Randeep and I heard her unique voice at a Hard Rock Cafe.
When we completed the music production of our album, we thought of a name and nothing seemed more justified than Antarman as all the songs in the album in some form was leading to our inner conscious’ and that is Antarman.
Randeep- It was in my mind to record a song with Pooja and we called her to the studio and the way she sang just blew our mind away and it beamed the idea of creating an album, as Pooja ' s unique voice inspired us and it was the album ' s first song Hobena we coincidentally recorded.
Pooja- I have known Rahul and Randeep for long and when both of them asked me to record a song with them, there was an instant spark and we came together to build the band.
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How did you guys form the band? What inspired you to do so?
Rahul – Well, forming the band was initially not in our mind, I knew pooja and Randeep from really long, I had met Randeep first during the time we were grooming for a reality show, we became really great friends since we shared an immense love for Indian classical, semi classical music and folk music so we bonded instantly.
Randeep- Rahul and I were travelling to Delhi for a musical event it was during that time we met Pooja it was 6 years back and we bonded like long lost friends, in fact she was equally passionate about music and we ended up jamming with her during our visit, though it was just a casual one, and we kept meeting whenever we were in Delhi or Pooja was in Mumbai and our friendship grew stronger. We always had in our mind that we ' ll do something together and then she toured with Shilpa Rao, we saw her live and the rest is history.
Pooja- We have always been inspired by folk music and our common love for folk music got us together to form our band and produce our first album. We always wanted to work on our most rich and treasured music form of our country and that is folk music. To begin with we decided to work on the Eastern folk form of our country since the three of us hail from Bengal.