Pentagram

Pentagram is a band that consists of Vishal, Randolph, Papal and Shiraz. It's a name that has faithfully stuck with the nation’s 90’s child. The Alternative act from Bombay began, like most others, as an Indian adaptation of bands like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains, but managed to push through newer styles, while still managing to retain the energy and flavor that they started with. Energy, for one, has a lot to do with the reason why they’re such an effective live act to date.

“You can tell at the beginning of a show how it’s going to go from there,” says Vishal Dadlani, crowd-puller and singer of Pentagram as they wind down ‘Think Of Me,’ from their 2002 album, ‘Up.’ “This seems to be going well!” The crowd at CounterCulture is readily indicating just how well it’s going, screaming, singing louder and jumping higher- just the sort of treatment fit for legends. In our English indie music scene, they’ve earned that title.

Vishal is celebrating his birthday and the crowd sings for him. “Now get your motherfucking 

birthday hands in the air,” he says and the crowd gets into it. The band slips into ‘This Is For My People.’ The track from the 2007 album ‘It’s OK, Its All Good,’ seems to mark a period in Pentagram’s growth when, having found their optimal sound, they could focus on catchy material tailored for mass absorption.

On ‘Nocturne,’ from their fourth album 'Bloodywood,' some traits stick out to help understand the music: Dadlani’s melodies are clear and his lyrics audible, unlike most of his counterparts in the country; Randolph’s guitar riffs are powerful and concise with just the right amount of repetition. On the anthemic ‘Voice,’ the microphone is handed around the crowd and everyone gets a chance to voice their song. “There are words that must be said and there are words that must be heard and that they’re not is really quite absurd.”

While the samples and synthesizer keep the guitar-centric material from stagnating, a major aspect of the show is just Dadlani’s stage presence and tireless enthusiasm. Built like a viking, when he jumps on the stage the whole crowd seems to feel compelled to follow. With appealing melodies and the instrumental output of a tight, metal band, Pentagram is easy to listen to and heavy without sounding like rigid noise. “Am I still feeding on the ignorance of others? Am I better than a four legged animal or is it the other way around?” The industrial levels of distortion, the electronic garnishing and some of the images in the words often recreate an experience not too far from Nine Inch Nails. “What I’ve got inside me, you’ve got too.”

On ‘Mental Zero,’ the crowd starts to lose their footing due to the neo-gypsy dance beat staggering over a crunchy but minimal guitar riff, and pretty soon the whole room’s doing the mental zero dance.

“Was anyone in this room born in 1993?” 

A young man named Hari gets onstage 

“He was born on the same year that we started playing.” 

We pause a moment to take this in. The applause breaks in again with genuine appreciation. 

Pentagram have come such a long way that it actually shows.

Sharik Learned to Play Jazz

Sharik Hasan

What goes into the making of a world-class musician? Bangalorean-turned-New Yorker, Sharik Hasan’s far-flung journey gives us a glimpse at the answer.

Sharik was three when he moved to Bangalore from Germany. At the age of five he started learning western classical piano and by ten was also being trained in the sitar. By fifteen, he’d gotten fed up with classes and decided to give music a break, but while looking into Colleges to pursue his majors in Math and English, he made sure to pick one that had a good music conservatory.

One day, in his hostel in Ohio, Sharik heard someone playing an extraordinary piece on the piano. Eager to learn the name of the tune and find its sheet music, he was puzzled to hear that it had been an improvisation- “just messing around.” The mystery prophet would impart unto Sharik his first jazz lessons and nothing would be the same for him again. By his 3^rd year, confused, he decided to take a semester off to spend some time in Bangalore.

The year was 2005 and Sharik teamed up with Prakash on Bass and Tillu on Drums to form ‘SoundOkHorn.’ Meanwhile, a rejected Visa extended his stay in Bangalore, giving him a chance to play at all the new bars that were sprouting up in the city. The academic setback turned into an opportunity to perform in front of crowds. “Those were great times and brought me confidence,” Sharik reminisces. “I got paid too. Pretty cool!”

Though Sharik managed to go back and complete his course, the bite from the music bug was starting to take effect. Soon after, while holidaying in Paris, his mother hooked him up with an audition at Bill Evans’ Piano Academy, and he made the cut. “Paris was filled with countless intimate spaces to play at,” says Sharik. “It was a good intermediate point between India, where there was nobody and U.S., where I was nobody.”

The next step was to surround himself with a competitive community of aspiring youngsters. New York, saturated with great artists, was the ultimate goal. He managed to be accepted at the Manhattan School of Music towards an extremely rigorous program. He received training not just in theory and performance, but also got a chance at teaching undergrads. It was also here that he started tapping into his Indian roots and understanding the importance of an identity in producing something different.

A world away, on a balcony in Indira Nagar, a few hundred meters from Take-5, where he played his first gig, Sharik recalls when he and a friend broke into a Dave Brubeck concert by sneaking in through the vent. “It was a humbling experience to live in the sort of place where you could walk into a bar and rub shoulders with the giants. The more I played I could see the effect music has on people’s lives.”

Today, the Sharik Hasan New York Quartet travels the world as cultural ambassadors, entertaining every sort of crowd- “making the world a smaller place.”

Ode To The Blues Festival at Counter Culture

Warren Mendonsa of Blackstrat Blues

Arjun Chandran of The Hoodoo Gas

On June 8th, a month late, Counter Culture celebrated the 102nd birth anniversary of Robert Johnson. This year also marks seventy-five years since the devil and his hounds finally caught up with the 27-year-old Delta-Bluesman. The makeovers in the music and its culture since the 1930s had been emphasized with colored chalk in acid-swirl lettering, welcoming folks in to the Ode to the Blues Festival- an evening of contemporary Blues.

Overdrive Trio played as quartet and then quintet

First up was Overdrive Trio from Mumbai. “A very good evening to all of you. This first one’s called ‘You’ve Gotta be tripping.’” If Sunny Dsouza sounded heavily influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, he accomplished the tremendous feat of actually pulling that off, bleeding notes dry. The talented guest, 15-year-old Kush Upadhyay, provided contrast with his shriller guitar tone and raw, psychedelic feel. Stepping things up by a notch, they invited the wonderfully virtuoso Warren Mendonsa. The remainder of the set would assume a continuum of solos, each outdoing the last like an intoxicated debate. 

The Chronic Blues Circus: Peter Isaac on saxophone, Ayushi Karnik and Owen Bosen to Peter's right and Sudhakar behind the drums. 

Miriam plays the harp while Rev. Barker simulates Claptonesque riffs

Next up was Bangalore’s longstanding Chronic Blues Circus with a troupe large enough to fill up their tent- five on guitars and one each on drums and keyboard. The Ringmaster, who formed the band over 20 years ago, Peter Isaac, started things off with his harmonica as his extended lineup found bearing and harmony within the set of originals. On “Any Man,” Peter switched to the saxophone as Miriam sang: “We’re going to take you for a ride.” Between the youngest and the oldest member in the band was a gap of some 40 years. The styles and tricks the elders had learnt from Jimi Hendrix or Allman Brothers wound their way from the likes of B.B. King or Muddy Waters. The source lay further back in the age of Skip James and Robert Johnson.

The Hoodoo Gas

The Hoodoo Gas pressed the fast-forward with Taj Mahal’s groovy ‘Leaving Trunk.’ Ananth Menon sang and maintained a spirited lead as Vasudev Prabhu nailed the blues harp licks. 

On ‘Malted Milk,’ Arjun Chandran’s loaded slide guitar riffs cranked up the intensity of the song’s distress. Talking out of their heads and getting the dance out of the crowd with tight drums and bass, they struck out as a well-rounded act. Later, Bassist Snehal Pinto and Drummer Deepak Raghu lay down the landscape for Mendonsa as he swept through with the emotional ebbs and flows of his cinematic blues. When Ananth and Arjun rejoined the stage the three Guitarists looked like a relay team, taking turns to support with rhythm before unleashing into solos. 

Monica Heldal

A mellow Dan Auerbach (in style)

The last featured act before the loose jams began was Monica Heldal from Norway. For a fitting tribute to the mutation of a wooden box into a soul-rousing jukebox, it was about time for an acoustic set. A mellow adaptation of Dan Auerbach backed the 21-year-old with the ambient weeping of his electric guitar. However, it was Heldal’s spotless finger picking on a crystal clear acoustic guitar that provided most of the soundscape. 

On Big Bill Broonzy’s “Banker’s Blues,” Heldal sang sweetly, “If you’ve got money in the bank, don’t let your woman draw it out, ‘cause she’ll take all your money and then throw you out.” On Lightning Slim’s “Nothing but The Devil,” the tendency in the audience was to sit down in front of the stage and stare in amusement as gritty takes from a tormented mind came tumbling out of the nymph-like ‘Daughter of the Everglades.’

The Blues is still young 

Whether boastful or morose, the Blues continues to celebrate a passionate inner energy breaking out of an oppressive mood. 56-year-old Owen Bosen says he started playing the bass after a 20-year hiatus when the Circus revived the blues for him. 18-year-old Aayushi Karnik who featured as guest guitarist with the Circus says, “I used to watch a lot of Tom and Jerry when I was a kid and used to try following the trumpet parts on my guitar.”

The Night continued well past 1o'clock, which is a big thing for Bangalore. There were more exciting jams and mashups going on even as we left, so we had to miss all of that. 

Voodoo by the Blackstrat Hoodoo

Good music can make this happen.

All images (except the ones with the 'getlive') by Abhimanyu Ghoshal

the exceptions were appropriated from CounterCulture

SAM Faculty Band at Windmills Craftwork

Recently, a super group of exceptional musicians leading different bands were brought into the country by the Swarnabhoomi Academy as faculty and later to tour a few cities with a performance. In Bangalore, they found themselves entertaining the Jazz theatre at Windmills Craftworks.

The line up consists of Jake Hertzog on guitar, Dario Boente on keyboard, Andres Rormistrovsky on bass and Jovol “bam bam” Bell on drums. From the start, they each establish the highest mastery over their respective instruments. Even when they get unruly and loud, it’s a trained unruliness with a perfect coating of translucent noise such that it never intrudes. A keyboard solo leads to a guitar solo that’s followed by a drum solo. The claps halt when the drum solo picks up again from where it seemed to have ended.

“Wow, I see a full house. Thank you for having made it. We have a lot of surprises lined up for you,” says Boente. Everyone in the band except Bell have their eyes peeled on sheet music as they run through the theme melody. Bell, though confirmed to be human, is what you would imagine from a groove machine, switching styles and moods with amazing dexterity and ease. On ‘Suite No. 2,’ Hertzog stuns everyone with a show of remarkable virtuosity. The song ends with a swelling of sound and peaks with fanfare, but its lost on the crowd who are at this instant lost to their tables. Hertzog’s ‘Common Ground’ is a saccharine soft rock piece, withdrawn like a background score, which they carry through with such perfection that you couldn’t help but wonder at how powerful is elevator music.

It’s finally time to call the special guest on stage, Jordan’s musical Ambassadress, Farah Siraj. The band swiftly alters its style to support a Middle Eastern tune, electric guitar gets replaced by a Spanish guitar and drums turning minimal, while Farah sings with gesture and sway to complement her song. She now gets to work on the audience by splitting them down the middle into two groups and teaching each a variation of a flamenco clap. When both groups are ready she gets them clapping in sync and they love it. “In Spain, when we like something, we say ‘ole,’” and the crowd shouts in delight, “Ole!” With all attention focused on her, Farah sings ‘Laila,’ her popular revival of an old Arabic piece, accompanied by Andres on Bass. It’s an almost devotional love song whose words translate “If I had one night left on Earth, I’d spend it with you.”

The band steps back in with an instrumental piece to shake up the softened house, Hertzog’s “Gloria,” a bi-polar track that picks up with a rocky riff before it dissolves into a soft jazz reverie. Hertzog accompanies Farah on Ray Charles’ ‘You Don’t Know Me,’ before everyone steps in for another of Farah’s originals, a song about a gypsy. The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins describes jazz as an improvisational umbrella sheltering all forms of music, an adaptable grammar worthy of a truly universal language. By the end of the night, time has slipped pleasantly away leaving the mind brimming with a world full of wordless ideas.

All Photos by Hari Adivarekar