“Come, celebrate life in its simplest form when you’re maddened by the bustles of a world that’s always on the move,” say musician Arpit Chourey and his team through their latest EP Simple Stories . The album, set in a country folk space, has certain healing quality. The unhurried guitar riffs, the focus on the mood even if it means minimal instrumentation, ensures a calming musical texture in a five-track album that consistently rings in an old world charm.
“This is the way I look at life, serene and simple. That’s how the name came about — Simple Stories . Sometimes a ten-minute walk with your loved one means more than rushing to your corporate job. Technically, reflecting this through music was tough. We had worked on each song for nearly four months, though everything in the composition, right from the lyrics to instrumentation were planned before,” reveals Arpit, also a songwriter, who’s moved to Hyderabad four years ago. It was a time he spent in a remote town after living in cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai that prompted him to give up his job for a career in music. “Living a life sans social media and spending time with people who have so much to give (even if they don’t know you) got me rethinking on my priorities. Then and now, writing songs give me solace,” he mentions.
Arpit realises that the way people respond to an album or a single has changed over the years. “The first few minutes of a song are important. People need variety a few seconds into the song, they become impatient.” For Simple Stories , they had almost 15 to 16 tracks, many quality numbers were left out to stick to a theme. Some of these songs will be released as singles soon.
Not a musician who would want to be tagged under a single genre through his career, Arpit says, “It’s about individual taste. Just because something is in vogue, you can’t like it forcefully.” He’s someone who enjoys musical collaborations (he’s been a part of Tangy Sessions, Sofar music) though he wants his core team to remain the same when he composes something. Whenever he teams up with a musician, he gives them a basic structure and also the freedom to explore it their way.
Having also sung in a Telugu film Nenostha recently, Arpit doesn’t feel that musicians need to choose between indie and film choices. “You need to trust the path you take. For instance, Nikhil D’Souza is an indie-sensation who has also worked in films selectively. When you try too hard to even it out, it’s a struggle, unless and until we go the Hollywood way.” Arpit has already set his eyes on his next album, wants to take more time to refine it and plans to come up with a Hindi single too.
He feels, “Hyderabad was a place where mostly metal music thrived a few years ago. Now, the acceptance for different tastes of music has increased, so are the venues, though not all of them are great. The indie scene has definitely shot up in the city and it’s showing consistent progress.”
