Stories in a song

The Atlas Project

While artistes and musicians have had it tough in the last two years, owing to the pandemic restricting live performances and recordings, a few Mumbai-based musicians came together to start a new venture. The Atlas Project, a seven-piece indie pop band, was formed in 2020 to create ‘global music that is not restricted by genres.'

"The band came together for the first time in the beginning of January 2020. We knew each other through common friends and would meet to jam with one other sometimes, but we decided that we wanted to now work together, make music and create something," says Omkar Salunkhe, a percussionist and a member of the band. Salunkhe, who has been a student of Ustad Taufiq Qureshi, also creates his own music apart from working on several Bollywood projects.

The other members of the band include six professional musicians. "Jignesh Patel, who is our drummer, also plays for Adnan Sami's band. Archit Shah, who plays the keyboard, has his own studio and is part of many bands. Smit Ruparel is a music producer and a brilliant lyricist. Govind Gawli plays the bass and has performed with many Indie bands for over a decade while Soumil Pandit is on the guitar, and has an excellent tonal quality," says Salunkhe.

In the first three months of 2020, right before the pandemic struck, the band had already done a lot of work on their first song, Mehki hawa, which will be released today. The vocals are by Ashish Kulkarni, one of the top contestants at Indian Idol. "We had recorded the song and were yet to mix it when things came to a halt because of the pandemic. We also had no clue about how to present the song visually," says Salunkhe. It was Archit Shah who suggested the use of stop motion animation for the song's video. "None of us have a background in video creation, and even though it was complicated, we learned how to create this by looking at videos online," Salunkhe confesses.

The video narrates the story of a bird called Mehki, whose journeys and struggles reflect ones that human beings encounter in their lives too, personified to portray the journey of life. "It also talks about how a free bird wishes that he had the stability of a cage, while the one in the cage wishes for a free flight," Salunkhe explains. The band currently has 10 more songs in the pipeline, and hopes to release their music at regular intervals.

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