On their third album, Rooh, Pune’s aswekeepsearching show us they're more than just a post-rock band. They're a band that sing in Hindi while incorporating a broad range of genres into their sound. “This album is completely experimental,” says vocalist, lyricist and guitarist Uddipan Sarmah. Rooh, which the group began working on soon after completing their 14-city of Europe in May 2018, has everything from electro-folk-fusion (“Eneke Najaaba”) to acoustic pop (“Aitbaar”), but also plenty of immersive sonic textures that’ll satisfy longtime fans. It sees Sarmah, guitarist-keyboardist Shubham Gurung and bassist Robert Alex working with old friends like violinist Ajay Jayanti, who added strings to “A Night in Zottegem”; as well as first-time collaborators such as Zokova’s Ritwik De and Lucid Recess’s Amitabh Barooa, both of whom provided their musical skills for “Chasing Light” and “Rooh”. While much of Rooh is about a new direction, it also marks the end of an era: Sambit Chatterjee replaced Gautam Deb on drums and percussion shortly after album sessions ended. Sarmah takes us through the making of each song. “Chasing Light” “The track is based on an old scratch. When we finally made the structure, we approached Ritwik. He arranged a few parts and they sounded great. ‘Chasing Light’ was supposed to be an instrumental song. But Ritwik created some spaces that perfectly fit my vocals. When we were at his studio in Delhi and were recording it, he gave me the mic and kept pushing me to try something. Instantly, the chorus happened. The track is about a person who is drowning and about how the best thing he can do to find his way back to the shore is to chase light. The reason I related this story to the song is because it doesn’t have too many dynamics, and while in the process of chasing light, a person needs to be calm. If he’s not calm, he might not make it. At one point, you can hear a heartbeat. That’s when he’s making it to the surface. Amitabh Barooa added the additional synths that lend character to the track.” “Green and Blue” “It’s a happy song. It’s completely different from what we’re used to doing. This track has start-to-end vocals, which we’ve had in a couple of songs in the past but not as upfront. The lyrics are by Nitin Mishra aka rapper Spitfire. I sent him the track and whatever I explained to him, he got exactly the same emotions in his words. It has sections about a couple being happy in a relationship, about having a long tiring day but still being satisfied, and about a farmer being happy about great weather. We named it ‘Green and Blue’ because when we were in Europe, in any picture we clicked, everything was green and blue. There was no filter needed. Nothing can be as beautiful as green grass and blue sky.” “Aas Paas” “I thought of a story where a couple has been hurt and the guy lifts the girl up and starts walking. The song is about a conversation he’s having with her while trying to find help. He’s telling her, ‘I don’t know the way out, I don’t know where we are but I assure you I’ll take you to a better place where we’re safe.’ He says, ‘You can relax but don’t sleep.’ The track opens up at the end and that’s when they find help. For this song, we wanted an emotional-sounding instrument. Sambit was in the studio and he suggested we add sarangi. He went to Ustad Allah Rakha Kalawant in Kolkata and explained the story to him. He played a piece and we got the exact emotion we wanted.” “Eneke Najaaba” “It’s an Assamese phrase that means, ‘Don’t go like this’. I wrote it when we were in Austria, just talking about life, and saw a very beautiful sunset. I wanted that moment to stay for a while and I said that in Assamese. By now, the other members are familiar with the language because they hear me speaking it a lot and we’ve built a very good following in Guwahati. The band was like, ‘Let’s write a song about it.’ When we came back, we just pictured that moment.” “Rooh” “The title track happened because after we returned from Europe, Shubham decided he wanted to leave the band. We were pushing ourselves too hard and not everyone was matching each other’s frequency. I got emotional about the fact that I started the band with Shubham. We would take trains from Ahmedabad to Bombay to play at 3 Wise Monkeys for five people. He was doing everything with me without knowing what else will happen in his career. We were just doing it because we loved it. When he said he was going to leave, I wrote the song at that moment. The lyrics say: ‘Agar tu nahin toh hai bhi kaun?’ Because you’re the soul of the band. You’re channelling all our ideas. Shubham changed his mind after two months. We wanted an orchestral sound for it because this is the only song that’s close to those on Zia in that it keeps building up and ends with distortion. So we approached Amitabh. He played the sax and recorded trumpet for the track.” “A Night In Zottegem” “Zottegem is in Belgium. We were there for the Dunk!festival. We always wanted to play there. It took us two years to make that happen. When we were there, we felt really burdened by the fact that we sing in Hindi and how people would react because it’s a post-rock festival. When we performed, the moment was so beautiful. There were 2,500 people watching us. That show was the only one where all five of us—we consider our sound engineer Adhiraj Singh to be part of the band—didn’t ask each other how it went. We just had smiles on our faces. Every other time, either the drummer or me won’t be happy or the sound engineer won’t be happy. We really wanted to write a song about the experience when we came back. Because it’s a post-rock-influenced place and it’s all about the landscape, we wrote an instrumental track. Violinist Ajay Jayanti did the best work ever. He added lots of melodies and different layers of violins.” “Aitbaar” “We’re in a very strange place. We’re not a Hindi rock band nor are we an indie band. ‘Aitbaar’ is a track that will help us know whether we should we take a step forward or stay where we are. It’s about the trust people have in the Brahmaputra river even when they’re going through their worst and about their belief that it will take them to a better side. All my songs about love are dedicated to nature. I took the track to the band and asked them what they thought because we’ve never done a straightforward acoustic pop song. They asked me, ‘What do you feel as a person at this point of time?’ I said, this is who I am. Then as a band we decided that no matter what we were in 2017 with Zia, we can’t go back there. Let’s be genuine about what we’re feeling. Let it go out. We aren’t trying hard to be commercial. We’re just talking about things that matter to us.” “Gangtey” “Gangtey is a valley in Bhutan that I visited. I couldn’t write a lot of lyrics there but all the melodies in the album came from Gangtey. On my last day there, I heard a folk song based on a Bhutanese mantra that means, ‘You existed. That is good enough. Tomorrow will be a better day.’ It’s all about spreading good vibes. I recorded the melody on my phone and played it to the band and they said, ‘This sounds great. Let’s have this as the last track.’ I got my sister Tanaya to sing on it. It came out exactly the way I wanted.”