Bickram Ghosh on his new album, Rhythmscape 2.0

If you are an Indian classical fusion music enthusiast, you must have at some point listened to Bickram Ghosh’s fusion album Rhythmscape. 25 years later, the album gets an upgrade with Rhythmscape 2.0. “I couldn’t have been what I am today without Rhythmscape,” says Bickram.

Rhythmscape 2.0: Bickram shares what remains unchanged 25 years later

From accompanying Pandit Ravi Shankar on tabla to composing music for over 60 films, numerous albums and collaborations to back-to-back houseful shows in India and abroad, Bickram has indeed come a long way. “For being on the charts for 10 years, to countless dancers performing to these songs, Rhythmscape indeed has many feathers to its hat,” he says.

When asked if Rhythmscape 2.0 is similar to the original one, the musician shares, “In a few songs, we have revisited the original tracks. For example, the Language of Innocence track from Rhythmscape is about children at play and the familiar sounds I grew up with. In Beyond Rhythmscape, the track Birth of Innocence has the sounds of my elder son’s movement in my wife Jaya’s womb, which I recorded with a Walkman, and also his first cry. The children’s theme remains, but this time, in the track The Hidden World, it is more abstract, hinting at a glimpse of the afterlife and how we all become children after death. I have used a few lines from a poem I wrote some time back about mortality.”

Did 25 years change anything in the process of recording the album? We wondered. “Rhythmscape was recorded live. I was not confident enough to record on a click track back then, but now, I have been recording for the past 25 years on a click track. T That’s a huge game-changer. Also, albums were not programmed so much then. It was all about playing along, but now there has been a huge change in terms of technicalities,” shares the musician who is currently collaborating with Sona Mohapatra.

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