Bengaluru indie musician Arushi Paul’s Home EP navigates uncertainty and embraces new chapters

While Bengaluru progresses to become a pitstop and home for prominent international artistes, it also induces the rise of many who are developing their talents to put out honest original work. Arushi Paul, a city-based singer-songwriter who reflects the best of the young talents in the city is back with a new EP — Home. During a conversation with the young talent, we come across opinions and insights into her journey as an artiste in the city, how her learnings and experience with psychology found their way into her EP, her influences and much more

Arushi begins by telling us how Home became a vessel carrying a variety of emotions. “This EP entirely talks about my experience of moving on to a new chapter of my life, the uncertainty that comes around it, the self-doubt, the excitement, everything around them. With Home, I decided that I was going to document all of that,” she explains.

Arushi also highlights the idea she had for this song, sonically. “I generally stick to the pop genre and I mostly always start with the lyrics. I don’t usually get an idea of the music before I get through the lyrics. So that’s how I started all of these songs. I started with one line, went from there and while doing so thought about how I was feeling. It was a nice experience of self-discovery as well because I was able to make sense of what I was feeling through this,” she highlights.

It is also interesting to note that Arushi’s background in psychology also subtly informs her music. Helping people be more cong ruent with their sense of self has driven the young singer to underscore the influence of this science in her music. “Psychology has been a big interest of mine for a long time, so, I like the idea of being able to understand people better and also understand why we feel certain things. But I feel like, through my music, something that I really try to do is to ensure that someone out there can relate to these songs and feel like, “okay I’m not alone.” That way, I like to tie in that aspect of psychology. I feel like it helps me feel that I am understanding someone better or I’m helping someone understand themselves better. That’s kind of my hope with my music journey as well,” she tells us.

Being a proud Bengaluru hudugi, Arushi mentions how the city played a role in shaping her musical journey. “I’ve grown up in Bengaluru and it’s a place that I hold close to my heart,” she enthuses, adding, “Most of the EP was written while I was here. I have lived outside the city for a little bit as well but otherwise, most of this has been written over here and the sense of comfort I got living here helped me tap into my feelings. Bengaluru as a city has always given me that kind of support because I have had such a good experience with the music scene here and that has helped me tap into my talent.”

The specific sound of Home is a result of the shared efforts of Arushi and her team comprising of her mentor, Richard Andrew Dudley, who composes and produces the tracks, Adarsh Subramaniam who handles arrangements and programming and Jaime Dudley who shines with percussion and drums. Opening up about how this EP is the most personal project yet, she says, “I think every song, every EP is a completely new experience, so you grow a lot from every experience that you have and I think with this EP it was about the whole culmination of just one experience. The previous EP (Make it Stop) was mostly about several different and smaller things that kind of tied together in me as a person. I was experiencing a lot of things along with a lot of people around me experiencing many things at the time. So, that kind of gave me inspiration for the previous EP. But this experience was a reflection of myself and it was about something that I was going through firsthand.”

Arushi now hopes to take this tour live across the city and aims to build a stronger online presence, continuing to create original music. With more to look forward to fronting his young musician this year and beyond, along with many more like her, we can say that Bengaluru’s indie community is thriving!