Exclusive Stream: Diarchy’s Stoner Rock Album ‘Here Lost We Lie’

Diarchy – (from left) Gaurrav Tiwari and Prakash Rawat. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

We’ve heard of stoner-rock propagated by trios such as Sleep, Colour Haze and Torche, but Bengaluru act Diarchy are bringing the riffs with just guitars and drums. There’s technically bass in there too, point out guitarist-vocalist Prakash Rawat.

He says, “With the type of music we play, which is mostly riffs, the bass would mostly play the same parts. So, I just thought I could route my signal emulating a bass guitar, which is basically an octave lower, parallel to the usual guitar signal and that would make us sound ‘fuller.’ After a fair bit of trial and error, I arrived at the current pedal board configuration.”

This hefty combination, set to drummer Gaurrav Tiwari’s stickwork, is what has made Diarchy a must-see band in Bengaluru since 2015. Their debut full-length album Here Lost We Lie features smouldering riffs that Rawat ploughs into over and over until they’re stuck in your head, especially on tracks like the doobie-celebrating “Bulldoper” and “Rorschach,” titled after the masked antihero from Alan Moore’s cult graphic novel Watchmen. The album begins and closes with two contrasting songs ”“ “Love” and “Wallflower” ”“ which lean on more introspective notes. Rawat says, “[There are] melodic and melancholic parts, of course. Of late, our musical influences and inclinations have changed a bit and we’ve been gravitating towards a little more psychedelic and ambient music.”

Recorded at Bengaluru sound engineer (and guitarist of parody rockers Live Banned) Sridhar Varadharajan’s Studio 304, the seven-track Here Lost We Lie was mixed and mastered by Ahmedabad-based Uddipan Sarmah. The band also enlisted Bengaluru visual artist and illustrator Anoop Bhat for a menacing depiction to go as album art.

Diarchy launch the album at the indie volume of Bengaluru monthly gig series Unscene’s third edition on March 9th, followed by their Mumbai debut on March 23rd at Summerhouse Café. Tiwari jokes about the setlist, “We’ll be playing a mix of our greatest hits, and a minimum of three new songs, including a cover you’ll never see coming.”

Listen to Here Lost We Lie.

Diarchy performs at Unscene 3 on March 9th, 2017 with White Mug and Gumbal at The Humming Tree, Bengaluru. Event details here.