MUMBAI: Indian Ocean, the band that is famous for fusion in India will be performing with The Local Train at High Street Phoenix’s Awestrung.

 “So we are in Mumbai after a long time. We are playing in Mumbai after six months since we’ve had our public concert and we love performing in Mumbai. We have three to four new songs that haven’t been released; we would be playing them at Awestrung this month. Also, there would be perennial favourites thrown in for good measure too,” says the band.

Giving an insight into their new track the Indian Ocean states, “First track is Akhiyan Udeek Diyan a cover of a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song and we did it on Times Music insistence. They recently acquired rights to a lot of Nusrat Saab’s catalogue and had an interesting idea of getting various bands and producers to make their own versions of Nusrat ji’s songs. We found this interesting and jumped at this opportunity.”

The band further continues, “The second song is Jaadu Malaya which is written by a close friend of the band Varun Grover. We have worked with Varun on numerous songs but always commissioned for a film or some other project. This should be the first track that we worked on for our album or independent release. The third track on the list is Soch Mat (tentative title) this one we have been playing live for a while now, it doesn’t comprise of lyrics and does have a Carnatic influence.”

Highlighting the song making process, “We work on a song for as long as it takes to get it right. Some songs we released have been just ideas for more than a decade. The way we make music is, to begin with a central idea and keep jamming on it. Then we put in our efforts till it sounds right and all of us are happy with the progress. We never release a song that we are not fully convinced about.”

Lastly, the band shares their future plans, “We will focus more on online content. We will release all singles on a digital platform whether it’s an audio or video release. Each song will have a unique story to tell about its own campaign. You will also see a lot more engagement between the fans over the course of these singles. We would be releasing six to seven tracks a few months later from now.”