‘I probably never listen to Indian Ocean,” went Rahul Ram backstage at Nazrul Mancha last week before their first gig at Kolkata’s most-storied venue. The instantly recognisable bassguitarist and his Indian Ocean bandmates were in the city to perform at the first leg of Red FM’s six-city Musicom, which featured music and comedy on the same stage. 

With the air-conditioner whirring away and the hum of a steady drizzle in the background, Nazrul Mancha’s green room was the perfect setting for a pre-performance conversation. The 27-year-old Indian Ocean has undergone a few line-up changes down the years, what with founding member Asheem Chakravarty passing way in 2009 and guitarist Susmit Sen moving on two years later, but their music hasn’t been diminished in the slightest.

Their luminous sound still reverberates across the country, as was evidenced by the incredible Tandanu, quite possibly their best album yet. It had the band collaborating with musicians like Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Kumaresh Rajagopalan, Karsh Kale, Shubha Mudgal, V Selvaganesh and Shankar Mahadevan.

One wondered if similar plans were afoot for the next one as well. Ram said, “The musicians we worked with on Tandanu were far superior to us in terms of everything — technique, musicality and experience. They were really kind and all of them worked towards the composition. That said, this time we will be having both our own compositions and collaborations.”

Lead guitarist Nikhil Rao, however, said, “You know, we may not have an album. We are thinking about just releasing singles online and then, may be after seven tracks, we’ll coalesce them into an album.” Ram asked, “Who buys albums these days? And they also entail the hassles of contracts with companies. But yes, albums are like markers for musicians and we might come out with it after the songs go online.”

Indian Ocean was one of the first bands to release a full album on the Internet with 2014’s Tandanu and its success lends ample credence to the impending all-pervasive digitisation of music. For the concert, they played new tracks along with eternal favourites like Ma Rewa,Bandeh (from Anurag Kashyap’s film, Black Friday), Tandanu (a Kannada folk song taught to Ram by his aunt and beautifully rendered by Mahadevan on the album) and Man Kasturi Re from Neeraj Ghaywan’s award-winning Masaan.

Among the newer tracks were an untitled guitar-heavy piece; one where they have collaborated with the legendary ghatam exponent Vikku Vinayakram and their take on a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song, Akhiyan Udik Diya. All of them, whether uncharted or tried-and-tested, came from the unmistakable Indian Ocean soundscape — an unexplainable well of music that is distinctly Indian with traces of the West.

They came on stage after the Aisi Taisi Democracy trio comprising social satirist Sanjay Rajoura, lyricist Varun Grover and Ram himself, let it rip on the state of our polity in scathing critiques through the vocabulary of comedy. From the nation’s current preoccupation with the cow to forwarded messages on WhatsApp, everything came under the scanner but with generous doses of rip-roaring humour.

But the headlining act was Indian Ocean and they played right into the curfew hour of 10 pm before fears of people pulling the plug on their gig made them call it a night. That said, those who had come were not disappointed in the least as all the musicians — Ram, Rao, vocalist Himanshu Joshi, tabla player Tuheen Chakrabarty and drummer Amit Kilam — were in top form.

All said and done, one has often wondered what was Indian Ocean’s favourite Indian Ocean song? Almost all of them settled on the lilting Bhor from 2003’s Jhini. One has to use the word “almost” because Ram doesn’t listen to Indian Ocean.