Premiere: Ioish Bring Calm and Chaos on ‘Reconstructing Dreams’ EP

Musicians are probably hoarding song ideas forever, some good and others certainly worthy of the trash bin. But New Delhi post-rock band Ioish’s bassist Abhinav Chaudhary held on to quite a few from across projects ”“ he’s also part of experimental rockers The Circus ”“ and found it fitting into Reconstructing Dreams EP, which releases today.

Chaudhary pulled out ideas and song projects created as far back as six years ago. “It actually feels quite rewarding in the end. I can share this now without being too embarrassed,” the bassist says with a laugh. Composed primarily by Chaudhary and guitarist-producer Vaibhav Bhutani, the tracks are then sent over to drummer Anshul Lall for his inputs. While their debut EP We Move the Sky (2016) involved Chaudhary and Bhutani going 50-50 on helming composing duties, Reconstructing Dreams features songs that were worked on together, with the only exceptions being “Cry Havoc” (written by Bhutani) and “Flatline,” which originally started out as an electronic tune for Chaudhary’s solo project Frozen Fish, featuring Arsh Sharma (vocalist and guitarist from The Circus and electro-rockers FuzzCulture). “Vaibhav heard it on my MySpace page one day in 2012 and said he wanted to work on it,” Chaudhary says.

Although the EP crackles with energy every now and then, there’s a marked focus on electronic elements more than ever before on the seven-track Reconstructing Dreams. Ambient passages and electronic layers take their time to build into an almost cathartic kind of rock, recalling the likes of British bands 65daysofstatic and erstwhile art-rockers Oceansize. Chaudhary adds about Ioish’s evolution, “It’s a similar cinematic space as We Move the Sky, but we’re trying to explore a emo, punk/hardcore sound without vocals.”

Although all recording was completed around a year ago ”“ when Chaudhary moved to London for an architecture course ”“ it took quite a while for recording engineer Anupam Roy to mix and master the EP. Chaudhary says, “He’d be going off here and there for gigs but when we got his final masters, it was totally worth the wait.”

After a couple of pre-release gigs in Bengaluru and BITS Pilani in Rajasthan, the band is putting together more shows to promote Reconstructing Dreams, with bassist Danik Ghosh (from indie band Run It’s The Kid) filling in for Chaudhary. Bhutani adds, “We’re going to have a bigger lineup for the EP launch which will include synths and another guitarist.”