From the heart of Pune’s underground comes a concept project unlike anything else in mainstream Indian hip-hop space right now. Moksh is the latest release by Shrirang Deshpande aka Rang, an unflinching exploration of a man’s heartbreak, rage, and the ultimate psychological collapse. Inspired equally by Van Gogh’s haunting paintings and the grim narratives of Crime Patrol episodes, Moksh is part horrorcore, part metal, and entirely unhinged in the best way possible.
At its core, Moksh writes a story about a man truly undone by loss. Told over the course of four days—through four tracks—the EP narrates the mental deterioration of a man grieving a wretched breakup. But instead of healing and moving on, he begins his spiral into the dark descent. From stalking his ex to murdering her, burying the body, and eventually taking his own life, Rang’s narrative offers no redemption for our protagonist. It’s obsession turned operatic, grief with zero filter.
Each track on the project is named after a Van Gogh painting—Wheatfield with Crows, At Eternity’s Gate, The Night Café, and The Starry Night—a deliberate choice by the artist that reflects the twisted beauty and madness which lies at the bleeding heart of the EP. Much like Van Gogh’s work, Moksh doesn’t look away from suffering. Instead, it stares directly into the void.
“I was originally going to make something about acceptance,” Rang shares. “But one night, I was watching Crime Patrol and saw this story that flipped the whole idea for me. I started developing Moksh from there, with help from my friend Mrunmayee.”
Sonically speaking, Moksh draws from horrorcore, necrotrap, and even metal, but it doesn’t sit neatly in any one genre. The soundscape is suffocating, distorted, and full of anxious energy—fitting for the themes of obsession, guilt, and rage that dominate the lyrics.
“This project is just a stepping stone,” says Rang. “The next one will be the perfection of what I started here.”
As self-described conceptual artist, his previous work leaned more into pop and conventional sounds. But after a friend told him, “growth nahi dikh rahi,” Rang chose to break away. Moksh is the result—a musical bloodletting, with lyrics scrawled in red. Rang also talsk about the influence of artists like Chaar Diwari, especially his Teri Mayyat Ke Gaane EP, as well as tracks like Barood and Kaun Mera.
“That whole project was huge for me,” says Rang. “It made me want to make something that unafraid, that emotionally intense.”
With Moksh, Rang invites listeners into a tormented mind. It’s storytelling pushed to a terrifying extreme—a portrait of someone unable to let go, unable to live without, and eventually unable to live at all. What begins as heartbreak mutates into obsession, and what could’ve been mourning turns into madness. The project embodies grief and the unraveling of a soul in real time. There’s no neat resolution or moral takeaway—only a dark spiral and a chilling kind of catharsis.
