It all began for Salud with G&T 2.0 – which changed the game by being the country’s first ready-to-drink gin and tonic in a bottle. Salud Sessions provides yet another electrifying way to connect and engage. To celebrate life The Salud Way – a way that encourages free-spiritedness and making the most of every moment. This new set of compelling tracks is currently available on all major OTT platforms including Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. Go ahead, get your groove on and celebrate this New Year with Salud Sessions!

More about Salud Beverages:

The brand may be called Salud Beverages, but it is so much more than that. It is an urban lifestyle brand, aspiring to go global, with life and lifestyle as its ethos, a mindset that is inclusive, and an appeal that is universal. It aims to give people modern, exclusive, socially responsible, and exciting ways to bond with their tribe, connect with themselves, and celebrate life in a whole new uncomplicated way – Life 2.0!

It all began with G&T 2.0 – a ready-to-drink gin and tonic that opened up a whole new segment in India for consumers looking for something fresh, convenient, easy to drink. G&T 2.0 has a truly modern vibe, with a flavour profile and image that caters to its target audience by being gender agnostic. It is a completely inclusive and diverse brand; it is for everyone. The beverage range will expand to a variety of natural flavours in the alcoholic and non-alcoholic space, each with the trademark Salud vibe of freshness, modernity, and easy style.

Continuing the journey of Salud beyond the alcobev space, are affiliations with music, fashion, and other upcoming lifestyle experiences that will fall under the Life 2.0 umbrella. Salud’s key investors are Prasad Vanga from Anthill Ventures, Rana Dagubatti, actor and an active investor and UrbanI, speed scaling partner. Salud was founded by Ajay Shetty, an ex-banker turned entrepreneur who successfully sold his previous wine venture, to lead and build a whole new lifestyle brand.

Created as the result of collaboration between musical veterans Mainak ‘Bumpy’ Nag Chowdhury ( Kendraka ), Bodhisattwa Ghosh (The Bodhisattwa Trio) and Ratul Shankar Ghosh, the triumvirate coalesced their talents to give free reign to the songs in their head.

The name which translates to “Tales of a Bengali Bloke” (according to Mainak Chowdhury) emerges from his pride in his identity as a Bengali, “I have always been a proud Indian. Especially a Bengali. This project is where we represent  contemporary Bengali artists who are aware of their socio-political economic surroundings and we have the luxury of dreaming and weaving reality and fantasy in our lives. Hence Ek Bangalir Upakhyan or Tales of a Bengali Bloke.”

Chowdhury describes EBU’s sound as “unlike my previous compositions with MNCFE and Kendraka, driven by the Indian sensibilities of time cycles  and modes alongside RnB; pop with a dash of jazz.” Born as “an unnamed project brewing in my head like an star ready to be born out of nebula”, EBU offers Chowdhury’s first pieces of melodic writing since 2013. On the encouragement of his friend, guitarist/producer Seth Blumberg, he ventured to not only pen down sounds brewing in his soul, but actually took to writing lyrics, intending only to pour his heart out.

The band came into existence as if by the will of the universe. Three weeks of composition by Chowdhury led to pieces that Bodhisattwa and Ratul Shankar Ghosh adored, which was followed by a concert and recording schedule fixed by Blumberg. They met Armeen Musa while playing, and the band found itself sculpted into shape in the span of three rehearsals.

Interestingly, they decided to fly to Dhaka in order to simultaneously tour and record songs. They were put up at the home of the incredible Baul singer Anusheh Anadail who gave them her studio space at “Jatra Biroti” for rehearsals and recording. Armed with songs composed but not sang, they found that the voice of Armeen Musa was the perfect fit.

EBU’s sound exudes warmth within its meticulously crafted refrains. As Chowdhury qualifies it as “Music made without prejudice.” and “ Music created without a purpose but for sharing”, the songs are immediately likable without verging on unnecessary circumlocution. You hear flakes of Steely Dan and Shakti thrown in, and Musa’s voice sounds as if it is borne out of the strings themselves. Nag’s faith in the understanding of his friends’ Bodhi and Ratul is evident in the organic nature of each song’s progression. The cumulative effect of each chord results in songs that make you want to lean back and seep into the sound.

Noticeably, the cajon makes itself heavily heard in the songs, courtesy of Ratul Ghosh’s expertise. Verging away from the familiar resonance of drums and cymbals, the cajon provides an emptier, more eerie accompaniment. It turns the songs into more evocative pieces, allowing the listener an almost nostalgic component.

Amidst the songs, Ekti Premer Gaan sets its roots in RnB, Nesha pins itself down in a five beat blues rhythm and Behishebi goes on a darker tangent.

Opening to applauding audiences at Jatra Biroti, EMK Center and Radio Shadhin had EBU off to a promising start, which they would follow up with gigs in India. Already wrapped up in the negotiations of an album deal, EBU shows signs of establishing itself as a musical unit to be revisited by listeners many times over.

Bombay Bassment x FUNC VIP is the electronic avatar of the band’s self-titled debut album, Bombay Bassment released in 2014, as imagined by Randolph/FUNC. This album presents Bombay Bassment in a new light, and sound. FUNC has used sounds from electronica and infused subtle urban, Bombay influences to embellish the energy that Bombay Bassment brings to the stage.

“VIP is an album that might just shock you momentarily. It is nothing like you would have imagined Bombay Bassment to pull off,” says the band of the new album that hits stories on June 1. “These songs have the same lyrics but tell a different story. Imagine JK Rowling writing her version of The Lord Of The Rings,” they add.

Working together has been a long-standing wish of the band and Randolph, and this album presented Randolph an opportunity to experiment with sounds and ideas, and also to produce an album inspired by the maximum city and its culture.

“It’s a “Bombay album” in how Bombay understands and plays reggae and hip-hop. We’re not trying to be authentic. This is our take on this music,” says Randolph of the collaboration. “There’s a lot of East Indian vibes, Marathi vibes, and a lot of subtle local, urban vibes that we decided to put on the album,” he adds.

For Bombay Bassment, as keen as they were to experiment, they wanted the end result to be “happy” – characteristic of the Bassment sound. “That’s where the creativity and production of FUNC comes to play. Working with him is fun and simple for the fact that an idea is transformed to rhythm so easily that it’s scary sometimes,” says the band.

The 10-track album will be released on June 1 2016.

Album launch tour:

City: Mumbai
Date: June 3
Day: Friday
Venue: antiSOCIAL

City: Pune
Date: June 10
Day: Friday
Venue: High Spirits

City: Chandigarh
Date: June 15
Day: Wednesday
Venue: S Cafe

City: Delhi
Date: June 16
Day: Thursday
Venue: antiSOCIAL

City: Bangalore
Date: June 17
Day: Friday
Venue: The Humming Tree

The band applies the term to the nature of their music for the lack of a better word, or so they say :

“We couldn’t find a term that would explain the music that we are doing…. jazz and rock are the two pillars or backgrounds that we are heavily banking on. Most of the treatment is very much influenced by Rock music, the content and improvisational spaces are very “Jazz”. While there are other forms of music that have shaped the Trio as well, like Blues, Funk, Drum-n-Bass, Indian Classical etc, it is still a new kind of chutney and if you want to find a name for the chutney, maybe the easiest name you will find is Jazz Rock”. 

The Kolkata-based trio marked their spot in the scene with the album Intersections, which introduced the slightly maverick but deeply satisfying execution of songs like ‘Cronos‘ and ‘Annihilation’. On May 23^rd, the band have every intention to outdo themselves with the launch of their second album, Heart of Darkness.

As one may imagine, the reference to Joseph Conrad’s harrowing novella on the inescapability of human savagery is sufficient to pique immediate interest. As guitarist Bodhisattwa Ghosh puts it :

“The music is an exploration of the horror that you feel deep down inside.”

The band also tip their hats to Colonel Kurtz in the avatar portrayed by Marlon Brando in Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now which shifted the literary context from Africa to the devastation of the Vietnam War.

One has much reason to be intrigued by the merging of dystopian themes, but the band make it a point to emphasize their understanding of music as one of spiritual exchange. To quote Ghosh:

“As music is a form of energy, it translates to us as feelings, emotions and perceptions. I believe, as artists, it is our spiritual responsibility to transmit energy back into the universe where we have received it from. If we rely on imitation and do not have sound we can truly call our own, then I think at some point we are being dishonest to our souls. However I strongly believe that learning is a never ending process and we are extremely thankful to have people who have continued to inspire us and lead us the way towards touching God”. 

For this album, the band has chosen to extend the ethos of expression to the visual. At the launch, look forward to a designed installation of pieces framed and created and framed by Shan Bhattacharya, a self-taught photographer who received the 2015 Shergill-Sundaram Art Foundation Photography Grant supported by the Swiss Arts Council. As the band sees it,

“…the work of the photographer/visual artist, Shan Bhattacharya and his ideas are based on the philosophy of expressionism and so is our music. The art is a reflective imagery of the music and the thoughts and feelings that the music evokes in another artist who expresses it through his art form. Thus the art accompanying the album comes as a photobook while you also have the CD that you can listen to have a complete image of what we are trying to express through the work. The album is called “Heart of Darkness” as we are venturing to explore the core of human negativity through two different approaches which come together to make a composite picture.”

Bodhisattwa Ghosh, Premjit Dutta and Bijit Bhattacharya promise an evolved sound with the new album.

“The entire album is recorded completely live and not even in a proper studio. It was recorded in room with a high ceiling to capture drums as reflected in the ceiling. We had installed a very inferior quality microphone at one corner of the room along with other mics which captured much cleaner sounds so that we could bring “bad” sounds in and out of the mix whenever we wanted to.

Looking back at the first album “Intersections”, the band has come a long way. We are deliberately deviating from the “Rock” vibe and concentrating on very intricate playing, harmonic and rhythmic juxtapositions with a special technical emphasis on dynamic range. In this album technique is just the tool and the music is nothing but expression. In a nutshell our aim is to make the listener explore the darkest corners of their inner spirit.”

Their emphasis on plumbing the specificities of fallacious and dysfunctional humanity also presumes to be matched by expressionist and postmodernist influences. In effect the trio convey an intention to provide an artistic experience that triggers elements of self-reflection, and possibly self-realisaton.

The launch will include the presence and performance of two songs by the inimitable Amyt Dutta as well as the talents of Calcutta School of Music faculty member and pianist Arunava Chatterjee. 

Date : 23^rd May
Venue : Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata

The first edition of DLDK in India will feature the much awaited headliner, former Swedish House Mafia 1/3rd, Steve Angello who makes his return after #OneLastTour. Steve Angello was inducted into the BBC Radio Hall Of Fame, a select group of producers who have made a significant mark on the history of electronic music. Fans in India will get the chance to listen to songs from his recently released Wild Youth album! On May 27th, DLDK India will debut at NSCI Dome in the heart of Mumbai and fans can expect to be entertained by heavyweight global dance music stalwarts with support from talented homegrown names such as Anish Sood and Nikhil Kandhari.

Alex Hes and Essam Jansen, Founders, DLDK say, “In some parts of the world dance music is really big. India is one of the countries we’ve always watched and now is the right time to establish our presence in India via DLDK. Moreover we found an ideal collaborator in Ferriswheel Entertainment who will work along with us to increase our fanbase in India.”

Shubhra Bharadwaj, Founder and Creative Director, Ferriswheel Entertainment & Partner, DLDK India says, “India is going to witness a massive global event with the world’s top 6 talents on one platform along with Indian support for the first time. This biggest one night dance party concept is one of its kind and we expect a house-full show.”

You can book your tickets on http://www.bookmyshow.com. Prices start Rs. 2200 onwards.