College friends who jam together stay together. That’s the way it begins for most bands in Bengaluru. But to outlast college, battle work life and make music; that is one hell of a challenge. Bengaluru-based BlendzZ is a bit different in that the band started off after three friends finished engineering college. (They were jamming about eight hours a day once they finished college and were yet to find jobs!)
And they’ve lasted a good eight years in various forms, with an assortment of musicians, taken their time to figure out their sound, and have now come up with their debut album.
BlendzZ is a contemporary fusion band that was formed in 2006, with a vocalist, a guitarist and a flutist on board to begin with. “We took our time figuring out what kind of music we would play. Now we know what we are getting at, after eight years!” laughs Vijay, one of the core members who’s been with the band from the beginning. “It’s the result of mindless jamming.”
Between finishing college, moving abroad to study, finding jobs, playing for other bands, members streamed in and out of the band constantly. Today they are finally a steady group of seven. BlendzZ features Chetan on keyboards/vocals, Jairaj on tabla and percussion, Meghraj on guitars, Prithwin on flute, Swastik on drums and percussion, and Vinay on the guitar (who has gone abroad to study now). Saroj, the only woman on board, does vocals. Vijay does vocals and plays bass. Most band members came through mutual friends.
“While we were in college we were doing film music. It still wasn’t like today, when so many bands are in the city. We hadn’t heard of Raghu Dixit or Swarathma,” says Vijay. They wanted to create a new sound but decided to take it slow and easy “because we were not equipped for stage. We didn’t have a proper sound and we didn’t want to rush things…moreover we didn’t have a drummer for nearly seven years!” Vinay, another of the founding members, was clear that they mustn’t restrict themselves in a creative pursuit and that they must play around with a tune till they made it work. They soon teamed up with a larger band Never Mind, and their first gig, Vijay admits, was an invocation song at an international conference! It took a lot of coaxing from Vijay’s and Jairaj’s mothers to get the boys on stage for the first time ever, they recall. Jairaj’s parents adopted the band and allowed them to continue jamming at their home; to begin with, they had to play covers.
“Our compositions are influenced by what we listen to. We draw heavy influences from Indian and Western classical music, Rock, Metal, Jazz, Blues and the various contemporary fusion bands. What we do is an attempt at discovering ourselves through music, across languages, across genres,” says Vijay, trying to put a finger on their soundscape. And that’s why the name too, points out guitarist Meghraj, who brings the metal and death metal influences to the band.
They continued to do covers; they were also doing Spanish style Tamil songs! In 2008 was their “big break” they laugh; they all went away to study. But that led them to jam on Skype, and get familiar with audio recording software.
“By 2011 it became clear that we weren’t going to get too many band members so we wouldn’t go up on stage. So we thought we’d at least get into the studios,” says Vijay with as straight a face as possible. It took them three years and seven months over several weekends (“We were all working by then”) to complete their eponymous first album of seven songs.
Meanwhile they released their first single in 2012 to wish the Indian contingent luck for the Summer Olympics. They presented Vande Mataram with flavours of soft Rock and Blues. The song featured classical musician Vidwan Suchethan Rangaswamy (Vijay’s guru) on vocals. Their next single was for an NGO - MITU that was working on a campaign to clean the environment; volunteers performed it on World Environment Day, in 2013.
Recently they shot at Swastik’s farm near Singapura in Chennarayaptna, roping in cinematographers from the Kannada film industry for the shoot.
Their debut album, BlendzZ , which releases on January 10 at GM Rejoyz, Malleswaram, features five Hindi, and one Kannada song, and their Vande Mataram interpretation. The styles span across acoustic soft rock, qawwali, folk, hard rock and also features elements of blues fused with Indian rhythms. The album features famous artistes like Bombay Jayshree, Suchethan Rangaswamy, noted flutist Amith Nadig, and lyricist Shankar Shastry. “We were inspired by collaborative videos we saw on YouTube. We wanted to work with Bombay Jayshree. We recorded a folk song and sent her a mail along with the track and she immediately agreed!” It took them another two months to figure out logistics and following up, before they were sent for, overnight, to record with her in Chennai! “She recorded the song Mann-Jogiya in two hours flat,” grins Vijay. The album has been entirely funded by family and friends, the band acknowledges.
Between 2013 and 2014 the band played at private parties, family get-togethers and functions in Malleswaram Association, Jayamahal Palace Hotel, for senior citizens of Nightingales-Malleswaram. They also did a gig at Phoenix Marketcity, and most recently at the Bangalore Underground Sunday Jam, for Rajyotsava. To know more about the band, check www.facebook.com/BlendzZ
