Diveakssh Schae’s Debut Album ‘Moments of Clarity’ Is A Sojourning Story of Melodies

Diveakssh Schae counts himself as a real-life Mowgli having grown up in the jungles of Dandeli in South India. Schae would eventually turn into an audio nomad, creating music while embracing nature at the same time. While schooling in Kodaikanal, Schae began experimenting with DJ software. He says, “I was fascinated with how I could stretch, reverse, and wrangle sounds in ways I’d never heard before.” After moving to Australia, he learned how to use digital audio workstation Ableton.

Now, Schae is out with his debut 16-track record entitled Moments of Clarity, which he composed while traveling across Australia and India. In this interview with Rolling Stone India, Schae talks to us about how the album came together, what he hopes people take away from it and more.

When did this idea to create a nomadic-style recording for your debut album come about?

After five years of working a job in Australia which had nothing to do with music, I started to get disillusioned. In 2020, I returned home to India, and one day had a moment of clarity, it felt like the music I had been suppressing just couldn’t wait any longer. I asked myself, “If I can do anything in this life, what would it be?” In that moment, I decided to leave what I knew behind to chase my love for music production.

The initial plan was to move to L.A. to study at Beat Lab Academy. However, the pandemic blocked that from happening. Instead, a series of events led me to discovering van life. I realized I could learn and create against a backdrop of everywhere.

The album’s title, Moments of Clarity, came to me in a lucid dream. It felt like an apt way to describe the awakening which kickstarted the journey to pursue my dreams. I had other similar moments following this awakening, so the name stuck. In 2021, my campervan Spoons and I headed into the wild to unlock the music that was stuck inside me.

Tell me about the process of how you stitched everything together.

On the road, you have to work with what you have. There were two distinct phases to the creation process. The first was composing the album while living in Spoons, my beloved campervan turned mobile home and portable music studio. Most of the drums in my album are made from the sounds of this 34-year-old creature. I slammed her doors, tapped rhythms on her steering wheel and sampled it all. This is why she’s the hero of the album, and is featured on the album art.

I traveled with her across Queensland, Australia to find the perfect spot to compose in creative isolation. I’m lucky to say I found it by the banks of Lake Tinaroo, in the Atherton Tablelands.

In 2022, I sold Spoons and returned to India with the bones of the album. Downsizing my music studio and belongings allowed me to fit my life into Mukti, my 55-litre Osprey backpack. Together, we set off to mix and master the album against the landscapes of Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Auroville, and Kodaikanal.

What can you tell me about the songs specifically and what they mean to you?

Each track on the album is based on true and personal stories about the awakening I experienced and the events that surrounded it. In my travels through Australia, I had a life-changing encounter with Charlie, an indigenous Elder of his tribe. I’ve included an audio story of it on the album. He taught me that their tribes have been sharing stories through sound for generations. Through this experience, I stopped trying to write tracks and instead started telling my stories through music.

For instance, ‘Platform 1’ is about a moment just before my awakening, when I dreamed back to my roots in Dandeli while crossing the road in Australia. It includes sounds of the Indian train, contrasted with the sharp call of the Australian pedestrian crossing.

‘Blessings in Disguise’ is about how problems I faced when leaving my world behind to chase music actually dissolved into solutions. One example is how the pandemic blocking my plans to move to the U.S. instead gave way to van life. So again, it has voiceovers that tell parts of this story.

What do you hope listeners take away from the album?

My intention with Moments of Clarity is to inspire those that are taking a leap of faith to pursue what they truly want to do in this lifetime. It’s humbling to see it start to spark conversations around this topic. I’ve heard from listeners how the title track has motivated them to back their conscious change of direction. Or how ‘epilogue’ has complemented their celebrating the completion of a journey.

Soon, I’m going to be sharing full-length videos that share the story behind each track unfolding in sync with the music. After that, I plan to create a podcast that interviews others that left a set path to chase their dreams, scored by pieces from the album.

Apart from this, I’ve enrolled with Ari’s Take Academy to learn digital marketing and playlist-pitching skills to help my album attract ears outside of my organic reach.

Stream ‘Moments of Clarity’ on Spotify below and on other platforms.