Blakc - Choking on a Dream (Launch + Album Review)

Album Name: Choking On A Dream

Artist: Blakc

Release Date: 10 December 2009

Their profile on Facebook says they didn’t want a half-baked recording effort which will have everyone complaining about the sound quality. Oh no. Blakc were clear that they wanted this album to have good sound and production.

”We wanted to pack in the energy of our live shows into this album.”, says Anish Menon, who plays guitar (or Gita, as the FB page says) for the quintet. Good reasoning, that. After all, the boys have pretty much been one of the city’s most popular rock acts since their forming the band in 2005. Of course, they were then called the more conservative Black, before dissonance with Facebook searches made them consider a teeny name change.

Onto the album: Choking On A Dream draws its title from the fact that numerous indie acts in the country succumb to external pressures and stop pursuing their passion for music.

The album starts off with the infectious riff from Rift, one of the crowd favourites. Of note: Powerful vocals by Shawn Pereira, nice soloing by Reindhart Dias. Tight band. Good stuff. Hopefully the album won’t fizzle out from here.

It doesn’t. On Alone, you have one of the best examples of basswork on an Indian rock song and kudos to Roop Thomas there. The live crowd will remember him as the silent dude with a Tweety hanging from his bass. The lower end is very well held up by Shishir Tao. Very clean slapping makes way for a largely funk-rock track that leaves you wanting to groove. An acoustic version of Sold follows, which didn’t do much for me to be honest.

Field of Thought is a classic grunge track. Catchy chorus, powerful vocals, loud guitars, and is my pick of the album after Rift. Ambush and the fun Somewhere in the Night follow. You’ll also notice that the latter has the album title in it’s lyrics. The clean guitar solo followed by the distorted version is a treat to listen to. The electric version of Sold follows, and you realise Blakc’s done a Def Leppard on you. In any case, you just want jump and scream ‘Sellout! Sellout!’ with Shawn till you lose your voice. Suddenly that acoustic version seemed like a buildup to the real thing. The album ends with a hidden track (I guess that’s what you call unlisted tracks), a cute short instrumental.

I usually judge an album by how often I want to hear the whole thing as opposed to one or two standout tracks. In that way, COAD scores. The explosive Rift and superb Fields of Thought are given worthy fillers in Alone and Somewhere in the Night. You think you’re done after the neck-straining Sold, only to have that cute instrumental at the end.

While Reindhart is no Baiju, there are some parts that will stick in your head after the second listen (like on Ambush). And there are certain ‘Indian’ tones – like in Devil’s Sympathy. Blakc are an exceptionally tight band with amazing live energy and you can almost feel Shawn crouching, jumping, dancing while belting out throaty, grungy, making-love-to-micstand . And Anish standing in his typical stand-and-deliver-and-smile pose.

Disappointments: nothing on the album per se, rather, what was not on it. My favourite Blakc song, Blacklisted was not played. They start their gigs with a fantastic instrumental called Bitten. Sadly, that’s not on the album either. Neither was Dreamcast, one of their most popular live songs, Paper Doll, and Carpenters Don’t F**k. But that said, they have good material for their next album, which I’ll be waiting for.

This is not just a recommended listen, it’s a recommended buy. Save 150 bucks by going by train one day, and buy this album.

“This album is going to be as good as Blakc playing in your ears”, saying Gita, er, guitar player Anish adds, for the benefit of those who thought a Bacardi Nights-type cover band would be playing.

Quick gig review: The gig was at Kir, Andheri West. The opening act was Rosemary, a very original-sounding psychedelic-punk outfit, who had more stompboxes than the Furtados warehouse. Check out their music here, it’s the closest to the Barrett era of Floyd I’ve heard in a while. Critics might say their music is too long and repetitive for the 5-minute-song and T20 cricket era, but they’re still a more than decent listen, and I’d like to see a full show with these guys. Blakc themselves played an assortment of songs, both on and off the album. The sound at Kir was not all that great, and whether lights should be dim is a matter of opinion (we shutterbugs had a hard time, hence please to forgive poor picture quality) but what killed it was the non-elevation of the band stage – so basically one line of people in front of you and you couldn’t see anything. Over 80 copies of the album were sold that day, quite an achievement for an Indian band for their first album.

Oh and, strangely, if you want a bottle of mineral water, Kir is the wrong place. Blakc’s performance was held up by 10 minutes because Shawn couldn’t get drinking water! And when the band asked for some water later, along comes a meek little waiter with four glasses. Onto stage. And places the water behind the amps. Comical, that was.

Deepak Gopalakrishnan aka Chuck is a social media professional who gorges on PG Wodehouse, jigsaw puzzles, Iron Maiden, Oasis, Motherjane, Blackstratblues and cricket. He blogs at www.chroniclesofdementia.blogspot.com and tweets (like a maniac) at www.twitter.com/chuck_gopal.