BANGALORE: It’s time to Rock ‘n’ Roar once again to the sounds of guitar riffs and drum beats with the return of the Harley Rock Riders tour. Celebrating Harley- Davidson’s legendary association with rock music and artists; Harley Rock Riders II will ride into Bangalore on July 9 with city band Half Step Down performing at the Fashion Bar and Lounge (fbar) in Hotel Ashok.With influences and inspirations ranging from Led Zeppelin, RHCP, and Dave Matthews to Rachmaninoff, Bob Marley, and Django Reinhardt, Half Step Down consists of Dhaval Mudgal (Vocals), Carl Abraham (Bass Guitar), Shiv Lumba (Keyboards), Srijan Mahajan (Drums), and Karan Dutta (Guitars and backing vocals).Accompanying them, will be Bangalore based band Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ), who had fans head banging to their sounds in their home city during the Harley Rock Riders tour in 2010.Thermal And A Quarter is a path-breaking band from Bangalore, India that has been making kickass music for 14 years.The band is notable for their focus on original music at a time when the nascent Indian rock music industry focused on cover songs, and their innovative use of the internet to reach out to new audiences. They were among the first groups in Asia to make their music available under a Creative Commons-like license. Their name is derived from the fact that when they started, three of the band members were of full Malayali descent and the fourth member was one-quarter Malayali, hence ‘Three Malayalis and a quarter Malayali’, which was later shortened to ‘Three Mals and a Quarter’ and corrupted to ‘Thermal and a Quarter’. In its ten-year career, TAAQ has earned the enviable reputation of being a pioneering Indian Rock band that has consistently defied categorization.Encompassing styles as diverse as Carnatic to jazzfunk, Thermal and a Quarter has four albums and hundreds of live performances under its collective belt.Formed in 2005, Half Step Down began gigging in 2006 as essentially a rock ‘n’ roll band, though it would be more accurate to acknowledge their sound as a versatile mish-mash incorporating elements of the blues, alt-rock, funk and reggae.Consciously refusing to let themselves be fenced in by genres, they derive their sound from influences and inspirations ranging from various bands as mentioned earlier.In early 2007 the band made it to GIR (The Great Indian Rockshow) with their track Overture to Outerspace, which subsequently launched them on a much vaster platform.They spent most of the following year touring the country, taking time out in June to appear on Channel [V]’s show Launch Pad.They wrapped 2007 with a highly acclaimed unplugged performance in their city, Delhi, where their cover of Redemption Song stood out as one of the critics’ finest of the evening.Known for their antics on stage, HSD are perhaps as much the performers as they are the musicians. With a hedonistic approach to music, they maintain an air of fun that remains a key quotient despite lineup changes and other minor disruptions.
Comments
0 comment