Chennai’s Fusion Group Oxygen Plot 36-Song Album ‘Metagen’

It’s been 20 years since Chennai band Oxygen started out, releasing several albums and mingling Indian classical with different styles along the way, even as they battled (and occasionally served) music trends. Composer and keyboardist C. Girinandh says, “It still feels like we’ve just started.”  

In 2022, they’ve kicked off Metagen, an album project that spans 36 songs, with the first six compositions forming what Girinandh terms as “season one” of releases. The composer says he had a lot of time to write and rummaged through older material during the first two years of the pandemic. “I found close to 36 song ideas [that were] unfinished. Since I have my own studio [Aura Studios in Chennai], I was invested in using the space to revisit and arrange our tunes,” the composer adds.  

Through virtual meetings and sessions, Oxygen found the first solid songs to record for Metagen, enlisting 20-piece orchestra group Tenor Strings. With the orchestra’s leader Francis Rozario on board, they began recording music videos for each song as well, starting with “Saraswathi,” which released in June this year. The monthly release series has also seen grandiose fusion songs like “Northern Lights” and the most recent single “Thandanaane.” All songs are mixed for Dolby Atmos and the videos are shot for Dolby Vision. Girinandh says about the scale of the production, “It’s a wonderful journey tracking 30 artists and a great experience to get to explore lighting simulations with our music. We thought it would be a way to bridge our music with the audience as we predominantly perform instrumental.”  

A quick look at the music videos for Metagen shows that it’s a full house of musicians on every track, ranging from percussionists and violinists to drummer Tapass Naresh (from rock trio Skrat) and guitarist Vijay Ganesan, among others. Girnandh says creating music that involves at least 10 musicians is a “very organic process”. He adds, “We go with the flow and that’s the beauty of a conversation in music or between the band members. It’s not a staged attempt and we try to define or fill the music with parts. So that way, every band member is given a space to harmonize the melodic parts or fill into a groove  retaining dynamics of live music. We have treated the sound as an ensemble, so the sonic blend usually takes the center in executing the overall sound.”  

“Thandanaane” in particular – sung by Tamil vocalist Muthusirpi – draws attention to the ancient and seemingly timeless profession of agriculture and farming. The song takes on a regal folk-fusion arrangement to mirror the pastoral life of sustenance. “As musicians we always relate and connect more with nature. This song is our humble offering to the craftsmen of the highest order, the sustainers of civilizations – the farmers,” Girinandh says about the influences behind “Thandanaane.”  

Up next, they’re getting to work on an existing Oxygen release “Yin Yang.” With one version released in April 2020 when the world was in lockdown, the band conjured Eastern sounds through violin, keys and flute with Indian classical elements added in as well. “As the name suggests, we tried to incorporate two ends of the cosmos through our sounds,” Girinandh says of the song, expected to release later this month.  

Watch the video for “Thandanaane” below.