A storm..
Great Indian Rock, 2004, Hamsadhwani theatre, a band played to a sea of people who sang and swayed like a field of daffodils in the evening breeze. Varun stood in the crowd and was struck hard by this enormous energy surging through the place. He felt this strong urge to get on that stage and lead the eye of the storm. Thus began the conception of Antariksh!
College Days
He picked a guitar and learnt it by himself with an ardent dream of forming a band he could call his own! The dream took form when he met like-minded individuals in college. Feedback and Under Siege were two bands that consisted of engineers from IIT Delhi and DTU. Varun was a part of both, lashing out on his guitar and living his dream. Chilling with machines and equations by the day and rocking out concerts at night, they couldn’t have asked for a cooler life!
Breaking away
The flow was great until college ended and priorities changed. Sucked in the corporate world, music took a back seat. Varun’s dream seemed to be fading away in the corporate buzz and that bothered him. He dearly missed playing the guitar. Being the charming management consultant wasn’t quenching his creative thirst that lay dormant for a while now. A few years passed with this gradually intensifying regret and he knew this wasn’t benifiting him at all.
A tough call
He decided to take a stand on this, quit his job and began working on a start up. He met up with a couple old musician friends, Mridul Ganesh and Gurtej Singh, who were also contemplating on similar thoughts as him. Expecting nothing very serious, they began to jam together beside their regular jobs. The year was 2012 and Antariksh was formed! The idea was to genuinely have fun and surf through Rock, Pop, Funk and Contemporary Indian Hindi Music. Putting in a lot of effort, they ended up recording an entire album together and called it ‘Khoj’. A lot of online magazines and newspapers, the music community in general and a lot of their common listeners applauded them and voiced some great reviews about the album. This was a milestone for the band and presented Varun enough confidence to look ahead in this direction.
Breaking through
Post ‘Khoj’ since 2013, Antariksh has released plenty of work so far which includes Quest, a mega collaboration with one of the world’s top ten guitar players, Marty Friedman (read more about it here). Their latest release, ‘Ye Jhootha Samaa’, is a peppy blues-funk number featuring the incredible Shruti Dhasmana on vocals and Abhay Sharma on the sax!
10 years and onward
Ten years have passed since the young Varun envisioned Antariksh. There has been many ups and downs, but the journey has always been onward and rewarding. Antariksh has helped in the advent of an intense progressive rock sound combined with a variety of musical styles from the East and the West into the Indian Hindi Rock scene.
out on tour!
The team is only getting stronger by the day and their intent of realising Antariksh as one among Indian’s greatest rock Bands is being accomplished one step at a time. The ’10 years of Antariksh tour’ is just around the corner. They head out to play HRC Kolkata on the 16th of September (tickets here). Mumbai and Bangalore will see Antariksh in the month of October. They count it as an excellent opportunity to showcase their music to people across the country and they very fondly hope to see you at their gig. These 10 years couldn’t have been possible without you listeners. Hence, the tour is a tribute to all of you! Come down, grace the occasion with your presence and rock together!
