New Fusion Group, Shadow and Light, Release Debut Album

Shadow and Light | Photo Credit: Shiv Ahuja

Nineteen-year-old vocalist Pavithra Chari met Delhi-based band Advaita’s keyboardist Anindo Bose just last year, when she was still in college. The Delhi-based vocalist approached him to produce a vocal demo. Says Bose, “She asked what I thought about it and I was inspired to write a whole arrangement around the piece, then we wrote another song after three months.”

For a year now, Chari and Bose have been working on a sound that combines electronica, jazz, blues and Hindustani classical. The 10-track album, Shadow and Light includes songs in both Hindi and English and both musicians shift effortlessly between styles and genres. Bose is no stranger to genre-mashing, having been a part of several bands. He adds, “As a keyboard player you want to meddle around.” Adds Bose, “Over the years, I’ve been in a lot of different bands and my musical influences have been varied. So there’s gospel, jazz, rock and everything else. We’re pretty flexible with each other, we bounce off ideas and we once it feels like it’s not forced, we lock it.” Chari, who was trained in Hindustani classical, moulds the melody of each track, after which Bose adds keyboards, drum grooves and delay reverb, among other things.

For their debut performance at Lodi in New Delhi last week, the duo performed the album in entirety. Says Bose, “Everyone wanted to know how we’d pull this off in a live set up!” Using a combination of laptops, keyboards and vocals, they performed reworked versions of their tracks, emphasizing on vocals and keyboards where ever possible. He adds, “As with most performers, we want to play at a place where people will put their phones away and just respect the artist. Especially for our kind of music where you really need to sit down, close your eyes and enjoy the music.”

Buy the album here.

Listen to “Shadow and Light”