Anand Bhaskar Shares Debut Instrumental Track ‘Light’

Over the years, we’ve come to know and love Mumbai-based artist Anand Bhaskar as the powerhouse vocalist and frontman for alt-rock/fusion band Anand Bhaskar Collective, the musician has now managed to amaze us again with his latest project. Bhaskar – who spent most of last year scoring music for a web series and film – found that he enjoyed creating electronic instrumental music. He says, “Instrumental music across genres has always interested me, whether it’s [artists] Infected Mushroom‘s Complextro or Armin van Buuren‘s EDM or Plini‘s post-metal compositions.”

That interest in instrumental music led Bhaskar to work on his own batch of tunes. His first is the ambient and melodic “Light,” the title track from his upcoming eight-song album. “This was a refreshing change of pace for me as I’ve always been a vocalist and a songwriter and have almost always written songs with vocals being the most important aspect of them,” says Bhaskar.

Ask the musician how he felt not needing to write vocal parts and he informs us that the experience was “quite liberating.” He says, “When you’re writing vocal parts, there’s always the responsibility of writing a ‘good part,’ in the sense that it has to be lyrically and melodically excellent. In addition to that, there’s the pressure of making sure that the vocal parts have ‘recall value.’” Without the pressures of singing, Bhaskar found himself with a bigger canvas to paint with as a producer, which according to him, came naturally.  

About the creation of “Light,” Bhaskar explains that he was on a sort of “forced break” due to working nonstop on scores. It was at this point that he decided to produce a track without any end goal in mind. “I wanted to produce something that had no shape or form, no brief guiding it and something with no general direction.” The process found him designing this latest offering that includes lo-fi elements, an acoustic guitar section, a hooky groove as well as tons of melodic parts.

The rest of the album is also going to lean towards lo-fi, glitch-hop and trip-hop music. With more singles to follow before the album drops later this year, Bhaskar has already planned for Light to be a dual album, the second part of which will be released in 2023 and is called Dark. “The other album would be a polar opposite of what listeners will hear on Light. These will have darker, almost cinematic score-based themes,” he says.

While his band Anand Bhaskar Collective released a single entitled “Ufaq” earlier this year, the musician informs us that the group’s next track “Dholaa” is soon to be mixed and is a collaboration with folk singer Mame Khan. He also plans on releasing solo pop-leaning tracks in Hindi as well as English tunes under a new moniker called Abacus. Bhaskar says, “These [English] songs will have a very soul, R&B and hip-hop vibe.”

Stream “Light” on Spotify below and on other platforms.