Hear Shachi Pathak’s Juxtaposition of Sounds on Debut EP ‘Mann Tarang’

When Gwalior-bred singer-songwriter Shachi Pathak sang at a college festival in 2016, she dedicated the performance to her late mother whom she lost in 2015 to blood cancer. That show would change Pathak’s perspective towards music and put her on the path to pursue it. Although she worked as a forensic expert for a year, last month the Mumbai-based singer-songwriter dropped her debut four-track EP Mann Tarang.

On her songwriting process, she says, “It is not very conventional, since I do not know how to produce music.” Pathak usually begins by selecting a keyword for the song and builds from there while purchasing licenses for music to use from a website called BeatStars. “The process of finding the track takes a bit of time for me since I’m very picky,” says Pathak. Once the music is selected she works on a melody to the lyrics she’s penned.

Mann Tarang was written during the lockdown and is informed by Pathak’s hopelessness in romance. The singer-songwriter says, “My entire EP literally drips off love, passion and desires one has towards their loved one.” Sonically, the record includes acoustic instrumentation, synths, lo-fi beats, pop elements as well as Pathak’s captivating Hindi vocals.

The EP opens with the melancholic “Ratiyaan” wherein Pathak sings about her feelings towards the person she loves while the pop offering “Kareeb” is about a “highly confident girl who is just unapologetically vocal about everything she wants and desires in her life.” According to the artist, the spacey “Adaayein” and dreamy “Aasman” both include poetic lyrics. She says, “I have used a lot of metaphors and similes, to compare my feelings and describe the situations in these two songs.”

During the lockdown, the musician has been working on her vocal chops. Next, Pathak is prepping for a new single about her first unsuccessful relationship with upbeat music to go with it. She says, “I’m quite excited to see how people receive it.”

Stream ‘Mann Tarang’ below: