Artists To Watch Out For: BLEK

Blek. Photo: Siddharth Dugha

The Mumbai band is one of the five bands to have made it to our list. 

WHO Vocalist Rishi Bradoo and bassist Jared Creado kicked off an unfortunately named two-piece band [BLECH] at the end of 2009, hooking up with their drummer Varoon Aiyer a year later to launch BLEK in 2010. “College was full of people who wanted to play instruments, but there were few who wanted to get serious and write music,” says Bradoo, “I think that’s what got Jared and me together.” 

BIG BREAK Bradoo and Creado played a few gigs at Mumbai’s Not Just Jazz By The Bay as BLECH [“We learnt a lot of lessons including how to play for a completely disinterested crowd and that it’s important to be nice to the guy who sets up your sound,” says Creado] before blowing up a lot of money [“We could have bought an expensive guitar with that money. We were very naive,” says Bradoo] on an EP that was available for a free download for a while, before slipping into a limbo. The band actively started hunting for a drummer when they wanted to compete at their college fest, Malhar. Finding a manager in ennui.BOMB’s founder Rishu Singh and launching their EP Hexes+Drama & Other Reasons For Evacuation set things rolling.

SOUND “We gave up on genres once Varoon joined the band,” says Bradoo. The band morphs convincingly from being a riotous punk band [“Hexes + Drama”] to frenzied dance punk group [“Fog+Strobe”] going back to being a grunge act [“Back At The Start”] that King Kong could thump his chest to.

SPIN THIS “Back At The Start” that you can scream-sing along to if your day has been particularly brutal or utterly unremarkable.