Bangalore based thrashers ‘Kryptos’ secured a record deal last year with North Carolina Record Label ‘Old School Metal Records’ (www.osmrecords.net) for their second album called “The Ark of Gemini”. It was quite a news in the Indian indie music circuit probably because of its status of being the first ever record deal signed by an Indian Band with an offshore Record Label.

Rock Street Journal (www.rsjonline.com), the only publication in India dealing with the indie rock bands across the country for over 12 years now, have more than 600 bands registered on its website currently. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg of the burgeoning indie music scene in India where even the small urban cities are having a relatively good music circuits. None of them signed by any label.

The big labels in India complain that the market popularity of the original music by the underground bands and musicians is low to break even, leave aside the profits. With this cold indifference by major labels, bands creating original music are left with no other choice than to market their music on their own. Bangalore based ‘Thermal & a Quarter’, the circuit favorites and making original music for more than 10 years, released their third album ‘Plan B’ as a free MP3 downloads on their website (www.thermalandaquarter.com) and received some rave reviews. Many other Indian bands like Envision, Themclones, Strange Brew, Zebediah Plush, Medicis, Motherjane, Prestorika, Orange Street, Zero, Helga’s Fun Castle, Soulmate have gone this way, pressing CD’s and marketing them through underground channels. But lack of proper distribution, radio airplay and a dependable platform do not allow these musicians to reach their prospective audience.

In the wake of this unresponsiveness, the bands are left with no option but to market their music at live gigs, but it’s a different story there too. Sponsors persist that the bands play more crowd favorite covers than play their own compositions. Matt Harris of the band ‘Galeej Gurus’ says, “Most of the bands try to insert self-comps in between cover because it needs guts to really go on with your own songs altogether. It’s a vicious circle wherein you don’t get shows if you don’t play covers and without shows you cannot display your own original stuff”. As a result, most of these bands go on as a cover bands. Even the most successful Indian band in terms of number of gigs and gig fee, Delhi based ‘Parikrama’ (www.parikrama.com) is nothing more than just a cover band. Yet, there’s always a breed innovative musicians that persists playing their own comps in gigs and are circuit favorites because of their music. Bangalore based ‘Lounge Piranha’ (www.loungepiranha.com), Kolkatta based ‘Skinny Alley’ and Delhi based ‘Level 9’ are such bands.

I’ve been reviewing releases by European and American Indies for years now and find that the Indian counterparts are no less anywhere as far as music and stage appearance is concerned. Where Indian bands lack is a good recording done for them, which is possible only when there’s money flowing in through a record deal. Well, there have been few record deals in the past, Mumbai based ‘Pin drop Violence’ with OML Records, ‘Pentagram’ with Sony and ‘Skinny Alley’ debut ‘Escape the Roar’ with Virgin Records. But, these record deals have been too minimal to be even kept a count of.

These bands are near enough unknown outside their country and things seem to be the same unless people expose them. Geography shouldn’t hold back music, especially when it’s good. Its high-time that we start looking out for new music outside the boundaries of our home towns and countries and give musicians a chance in terms of record deals, gigs or a plain listen to their music and a gracious ‘hi’.

First published in www.theplasticashtray.co.uk on July 2007

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