Lucid Recess Begin Work On Their Third Album

Growing up in Guwahati, on a diet of Dream Theatre, Symphony X and Aerosmith, Amitabh and Siddharth Barooa’s paths were predestined for music. The siblings formed Lucid Recess in 2004, for a gig at the Assam Engineering College’s annual festival Pyrokinesis, when Amitabh was still in school and Sid was an undergrad student at Cotton College in Guwahati.

Despite the warm reception they received, it was a dry few years for the band till 2007, with just 5 gigs and one track in their kitty. Today though, with their third album in the works, a studio that produces most of the rock music that comes out of the Northeast and a vast repertoire of original scores, they’ve come the distance.

Named after the medicine term “lucid interval”, from a John Grisham novel, meaning a temporary improvement in a patient’s condition after a traumatic injury, the band’s frontman and bass player Amitabh says the band is trying to imply, “listeners will feel good when they listen to our music and then get back to their normal state.”

While ”˜normal’ is not a layperson’s immediate association with a metal band, Lucid Recess’ sounds are anything, but stereotypical metal. In a hat tip to Nineties alternative rock bands Lucid Recess’s songs are a smooth amalgamation of earlier influences of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica and Creed, moving onto bands like Alter Bridge, Alice In Chains and Guns N’ Rose. The icing on the cake is drummer Partha Boro’s [who came on board in 2009] jazz and punk influences that bring to their sounds an energetic pumping bass-line that runs constant and deep through their music.

Crisp riffs and a superb production are other constants, right through an angry debut EP Carved released in 2007, onto their 2010 more commercial first album Engraved Invitation. “After the lyrics of our heavier first album revolved around social issues like terrorism, global warming, AIDS and drug abuse, our second album took a different, milder approach, and lyrically we tried to keep based on life and personal viewpoints,” explains Amitabh.

Having headlined a number of the usual college circuit festivals and done the round of GIR, the Kingfisher Pub Rock Festival and the Unseen Underground Pub Fest, the band have opened for international acts like Meshuggah (Sweden), Sahg (Norway), Eluveitie (Switzerland) and Arsames (Iran).

Bypassing the obvious hiccups of finding a record label, the band set up their own studio, Lucid Recess Studio in 2008 to also work with local rock bands, now interested in making original music.

Lucid Recess hope their music appeals to the  heart and the head, with both brothers having written songs right from their childhood. “Most of our songs are heavy. But some have light choruses,” says Amitabh of their range of tracks from heavy and fast to slow ballads. Whatever our classification, their fundamental ideology is to make relatable music with catchy choruses, meaningful lyrics and good melodies, all wrapped into a neat package of a sharp, well produced record.

Lucid Recess will perform at the Ziro Festival of Music on September 15th
Go here to buy tickets to the festival

Watch the music video of “Changes Are Sold”

Listen to their new single, “Wireless Junkies”