Angad Berar opens the floodgates to Hindustani psychedelic sounds on debut album ‘Elephants on the Beach’

They say that music is one of the best ways to convey one’s emotions and effectively expound their train of thoughts and feelings. This notion was evidently taken to heart by Bangalore-based composer, Angad Berar. With his debut album ”Elephants on the Beach”, Berar takes the liberty to showcase the entire range of his musical capabilities by employing a barrage of analog instruments and pre-recorded sample songs to create a masterful reconstruction of his experiences and emotions that he gathered in the time spent on beaches during his college days.

Elephants on the beach is an eight track album that takes you on a blissful journey of its own. The album is primarily instrumental but laden with voice samples of Angad’s inspirations like Alan Watts, Mooji and Hofferman. This album primarily gathers its musical prowess from the extended instrumental sections where Berar manages to open the floodgates to a plethora of psychedelic sounds and tones which then undergo various types of permutations and combinations ultimately to cocoon the listeners in this virtual musical world that the composer has created himself.

His music treads on the lines of psychedelia and krautrock along with elements of Hindustani classical music. The album rich in complexity and tranquillity. Angad’s use of guitar in the entire album is very intricate which makes the album sound serenading. The use of the delay pedals and samples are cohesive and playful at the same time. The songs are harmonically rich. One thing that stands out in this album is the arrangements of the songs. The rich usage of the guitar can be made out conspicuously and Angad seems to go all out on them by employing every single trick up his sleeve relating to the particular instrument. The exquisite marriage of different types of tones and sounds in this album is really what makes it stand out from the others in this genre.

In conclusion, Berar has managed to present to the audience an album that is conceptual and at the same time delivers a raw feeling. It is common for this kind of an experimental album to evoke different emotions in various people, but the one thing that is evidently common is the fact that Angad Berar has delivered a beauty in his first attempt and the manner in which he manages to rapt the audience’s attention and holds it till the last few seconds of the album bears testament to that statement.

Hear the album below: