JD Rock Awards Best Emerging Act Series Draws To A Close In Delhi Next Week

(Left) FuzzCulture’s Srijan Mahajan and Arsh Sharma

Since last year, the Best Emerging Act gig series to showcase and choose promising talent from across the country has traveled to Pune, Bengaluru and now concludes in New Delhi. The Bengaluru edition last week saw stellar performances by post rockers Until We Last, alt rock act Machine Era, Kochi-based Black Letters and Chennai-based Tamil folk/blues band Sean Roldan & Friends.

Bands performing at the New Delhi edition include Gurgaon-based funk act The Incredible MindFunk, Delhi-based pop rock act Frisky Pints, experimental electronica-rock act Sundog Project, noise/electronica project Tankbund and glitch hop duo FuzzCulture. Check out what to expect at the gig which is all set to take place on the January 16th at Hard Rock Café, New Delhi.

FuzzCulture

Says Arsh Sharma, who handles the programming, mixing, vocals and guitars of the Delhi-based electronica outfit, “We’re planning on playing most of our EP [Indulge.Divulge] which we released in September and we’ve been writing new material as well. We’ll be debuting a lot of fresh material at the gig. So as long as you are ready to move, you’ll have a good time. It’s a high energy set.”

Setlist: Their set will include tracks like “Midnight Delinquents”, “Pizkiatone”, “Degenration Next” and “Mr Profanity” off their EP Indulge.Divulge.

Working On: “We’re actually working on a full length album now, which will take a year to complete as we’re planning to do a bunch of collaborations as well. And we absolutely plan on doing more gigs this year. We just ended the year with four back-to-back gigs and have a show in Bangalore after this JD gig.”

The Incredible MindFunk

Guitarist Siddhant Agarwal says, “We plan on playing all the tracks off our album, if time permits. Otherwise, we’ll try and fit in as many tracks as we can. Our set at the gig won’t be exactly like the album though.”

Setlist: Includes tracks from their album Absolutely Essential like “Don’t”, “Maybe It’s Me”, “Get Away” and “Epiphany.”

Working on: “We are already working on a new album and hope to have at least seven tracks on this one. And we absolutely hope and want to do more shows this year,” says Agarwal.

Frisky Pints

Says Joseph Dinji, vocalist and guitarist of the Delhi-based band, “You can expect a lot of energy and a lively performance and some good music, I guess.”

Setlist: Their set will include tracks like “Not For You,” “Vain” and “Frisky Song.”

Working On: Dinji adds, “Right now, we are working on an album and plan to release it by May. And we definitely want to start touring soon if we have enough contacts and venues calling out to us.”

SundogProject

When asked about what one can expect from their set, songwriter/composer Rahul Das says, “I’ve coined a term for this by now and it’s ”˜visceral self-exploration.’ But jokes aside, what you can expect is the same thing you expect from the album. And we do jams and two minute connectors between songs.”

Setlist: The set will see tracks like “Parhelion”, “Hole”, “Witching Hour” and “Venus” off their album Hex1/Visions.

Working On: Says Das, “This year, we plan on releasing our next album Hex2/Visitations around the same time we released Hex1/Visions, which is sometime in September or October.”

Tankbund

Vocalist and keyboardist Ritwik De says, “Since it’s a short setlist, we’re going to stick to our ambient, trippy music formula. We hope it’s something different for everyone seeing us at the gig, since we just use the keys and no guitars in our sets. So this is a new kind of sound.”

Setlist: They plan on performing tracks such as “The Dissembler”, “Limbo” and “Tease” from their debut self-titled album, which released last year.

Working On: “Our previous album was out in June last year and we have a couple of songs which came up after that. We’re currently working on our EP, which we plan to release by January end or February and hope to push it through a tour. We’re also going to incorporate visuals and this time we’re going to have physical copies of our EP unlike just digital downloads of our previous album,” says De.

Catch SundogProject, FuzzCulture, The Incredible MindFunk, Frisky Pints and TankBund on the 16^th of January, 2014 at Hard Rock Café. Entry: Rs 250 [full cover]. Event details here.