Step up and jam

New Delhi-based singer, producer and keyboardist Tarana Marwah says Delhi has a lot of underutilized young talent

October 05, 2017 03:44 pm | Updated 03:44 pm IST

Finding your voice if you’re in pop or electronic music can be daunting, with different influences and trends pulling you in various directions. For New Delhi-based singer, producer and keyboardist Tarana Marwah, electronic pop music is just the soundscape she needed for all her experiments.

Her full-length album Soliloquy is not just a mind-bending treat for listeners, but also an undertaking like few others in India’s alternative music circuit. Marwah has worked with designer Pakhi Sen on not just album artwork but also costume designs for outfits she’ll wear on stage. And then there are animators such as Siddhant Agarwal (who worked with visual artist Siddhartha Iyer on her debut video ‘Time’) and Sharath Ravishankar (who’s working on her next music video that introduces the world of ‘Candyland’).

Marwah says, “I’m getting a lot of videos made – the whole purpose was to collaborate a lot. I feel like Delhi has a lot of young talent that people aren’t using. They don’t need to be famous or have a foothold, but they’re so talented.”

Her process of finding her collaborators? Marwah says she searched online and set up meetings with “people I connected with aesthetically” to see if anything would click. She adds, “I feel lucky, because the art is phenomenal. These were ideas in my head and it’s really cool to watch it become a reality.”

In the studio, Marwah worked with not just her drummer Suyash Gabriel but also producer Rohan Ramanna, singer-producer Sohrab Nicholson, bass prodigy Mohini Dey and ace guitarist Warren Mendonsa (from Blackstratblues) in Mumbai and over the internet. While her debut self-titled EP from 2015 revelled in instrumental layers that were heavily inspired by Japanese culture, Soliloquy does take a more vocal-led approach. It is all very conscious and Marwah will continue changing it up. She says, “This may not be the end – I may collaborate in different languages and styles, I’m still figuring it out.”

While she’s got a special launch show planned for her homecoming gig in New Delhi later this month – think choirs and a violin quarter that will completely reinterpret her songs – Komorebi will perform at Indiranagar venue The Humming Tree on October 6 to kick off the album launch tour. She says about playing in the city, “We’ve played a lot at Humming Tree and I really dig that venue. Some of our best gigs have been in Bangalore, because people are so ready to listen. We opened for (Mumbai electronic artist) Your Chin (in May 2016) and it was unforgettable. It was off the hook.”

In order to take a complex, multi-layered, multi-genre album such as Soliloquy live, Komorebi is hard at work. Marwah says, “Suyash and I are jamming like crazy – it’s a little more complicated and comprehensive but it’s worth it. It’s definitely a step up from what we’ve done before.”

Catch Komorebi and Signal W at The Humming Tree, Indiranagar on October 6 from 9 pm onwards.

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