While a lot of people are always busy trying to find the right lyrics for their music, city-based music producer Subhagata Singha focuses on telling his stories solely through instrumental music. Listening to The Journey Of Light from his first album, we realise it is quite an adventure in itself, and immediately feel like we are about to embark on a space odyssey. While Subhagata, or Rivu, as he is popularly called, also plays for the band Praying Mantis, he has been producing music by himself for the last seven years.
On the personal front, under his solo project, Rivu, he released his first album The Incredible Journey To Light, in October 2017. The 25-year-old is currently working on his second album, which is due to release in the next few weeks.
Synthesising rock
Subhagata's second album, The Incident, he tells us, is more experimental than any of his other work. Interestingly, the story of the first album is about a dystopian future on Earth, where a lot of lives are lost, and humans decide to go to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, at the speed of light. The upcoming album, through its various changes in rhythm, will take listeners on a musical journey about what happened prior to the incident, as well as an epilogue of how the spaceship actually turns into a magical light beam. The story, Subhagata tells us, came to him in a dream, after he listened to Jupiter from The Planets Suite by Gustav Holst. And since he always had a penchant for science fiction, he wrote the music for the story as soon as he woke up.
The first song is by the same name and is a four-part track, among six songs in the story.“This album is like an expression of the study of musical concepts, which I am currently doing every single day,” Subhagata shares. Primarily instrumental music, it will have metal and synthesiser progressive rock weaved into it. “It is more like a middle ground between the synthesiser and the 1980s retro wave,” he tells us, adding that it is like the tracks in The Blade Runner or even Daft Punk of the ’80s.
He adds that it also sounds similar to prog rock bands like Dream Theatre and the musical experiments of guitarist Steve Vai. With so many elements, it is no doubt that Subhagata is a multi-instrumentalist. He plays the keyboard, drums and bass guitar, as an extension of the guitar, which is the core instrument for all of his compositions.
Kolkata connect
As for how Kolkata is taking to his music, he offers, the city is very receptive — with rock playing at one moment, and progressive electronic music the next, all at the same show.“For me, Kolkata is always in a transient phase of growing, which is nice, as musicians can always explore new sounds,” he concludes.