My introduction to Rounak Maiti is bizarre, which is to say I find his music the same week in two places, and fail to connect the dots. I refute the blame, though — to myself, because I do find him in two distinct shapes of identities that do not immediately crossover in their capacities in my head. The two singles, BAARO MAALA and Give U Nothin are so far apart, that the interplanetary difference between the two is just bridged by Maity’s artistry stretched in between. This was in 2023, and post a brief epiphany that occured to me mid stalking the artist’s socials, I found myself knee-deep into his solo music.
In an interview with Platform, Maiti says, “When I’m working, I need music that is very immersive, and thus found a lot of solace in ambient, drone and minimal. I started listening to a lot more shoegaze and slowcore music too. As I started writing the new record, I channelled these newfound interests by recording several layers of instrumentation – guitars, synths, drones, vocal harmonies and more. I wanted to invoke a deep sense of atmosphere, rather than focus too much on chord progressions and lyricism. Most songs were written in the span of one day, where I’d record a ton of loops. The words came pretty much as a stream of consciousness and I’d write them as I was recording. Then, I’d tinker with everything for several weeks, because I wanted it all to be produced very meticulously”. The artist delivers, because for the most part of this record, you find yourself drenched in the sensibility of an ultraviolet fog. Something about the sound has the texture of a bildungsroman, where you are kind of stretched into something very familiar and something unencountered. Something that Waiting on the Comedown is characterised by the lack of esotericism — the music is translatable, it gets to you, serves the intended purpose of atmospheric music by enveloping you almost completely.
It becomes clear to the listener that Maiti exists in a pre-emptive state of being permanently cut open, and he prods the openings apart at times, and sutures them back up at others. A lot of it is written like poetry, sometimes paired with typical indie-pop percussion lines, sometimes with hollowed out synths that you have not not heard before somewhere. The lyrics float past you like strands stripped off an unruly fabric, because Maiti throws at you “I am an unopened storage container / I’ll keep your secrets barely within reach / And always out of sight” when you have relaxed into his mellow, thinned out vocals.
The artist scatters and sprinkles his influences everywhere — you can hear a lot of Elliot Smith and perhaps The Clientele in his music. Smith’s version of grief does dwell in the gaps of Maiti’s sound. Fool, one of my favorite tracks on the album, has the artist singing in near-whisper — “It’s easier to just pretend / Like the world’s had it out for you / And you are livid you are cruel/They made you out for such a fool / They don’t know the half of it”.
The wonder in the artist’s music is how easy he makes it all sound, the gentle drum and guitar loops, the sonic buildups that almost seem common sense. It is almost like the artist has carefully hung up lights that do not blind you — he is not trying to dismember, perhaps only disarm.
Another favorite’s Speak Out Loud, where he reclines a little farther out of the neo-indie-bedroom-pop sound and goes for something a little older, and perhaps it’s the metronome, or the abandoning of the cadence that he does in the preceding tracks — it cements you further into the reverie that the artist intends to create. What you learn, from listening to Waiting on The Comedown is that it is a composite body of work, and you should listen to it whole, and if in parts, circle back to the rest.
What you learn, from listening to the album, is that it was written with a lot of heart, perhaps in the aftermath of its overboiling on an underestimated flame on a stove. What you learn is what you keep with you for some time longer than you would think you would.
