Name : Madhav Ravindranath

Comapny : Roadcrew Records

City : Chennai

How was 2009 for you and your company? What do you think has been the best thing to happen for the Indian Rock scenario in 2009?
Well, 2009 marked the start of my label “Roadcrew Records” and put Rat King, the first band on my label up on center stage, so that’s a highlight for me personally. I signed on the band only because I was blown away by their music and I knew that if I didn’t intervene, the music would collect dust in Deepak and Murari’s respective computers. I’ve been promoting them like crazy and I consider it a success of sorts, that the band has made fans and has had their albums ordered from as far as Israel, Germany and Australia! I also joined the wonderful team at Headbangers India, and that’s been great.

On a national front, 2009 will be remembered as perhaps the year Indian metal went international, with bands like Opeth, Textures, Porcupine Tree etc finding their way to India and Demonic Resurrection and Kryptos getting selected to play in Europe. Ok so that’s happening in 2010 but never-the-less, that’s a big deal, right? The Flaming Skull Podcast has been regularly featuring international bands along with Indian ones, all of which comprise a slow but steady rise to international awareness.

What are your Favorite song / album from 2009?
I can’t pick a single song/album, but my top picks would be: Blind Image –  Deciphered, Bhayanak Maut – MNS Messenger, Rat King –  Tranquility Lane, Rabbit Is Rich – Kaboom and Hydrodjent –  Dots among others. Special mention to Eccentric Pendulum, Theorized and Escher’s Knot. And Skrat, from Chennai. Not many have heard their music but damn, they impressed the hell outta me!

Please share an instance on/offstage that you can’t forget from 2009.
No onstage moments for me this year. The closest I came to getting onstage was when I helped Anupam Roy/Shashwat Gupta with the amps at Deccan Rock Fest 2009! Hopefully, 2010 will hold new fortunes for me. I’ve got a mean drummer and a solid guitarist, we start practice and gigs in Jan.

Offstage, I would again have to bring DRF 2009 to mind. Awesome metal, hanging out and eating honey dipped cookies with Textures, drinking loads of beer in Bangalore and a murderous allergy that caused my face to swell to double its size the day before the show all adds up to one crazy weekend.

What is your and your company’s / band’s plan for year 2010?
More promotion I guess. Get Rat King, Heretic and Blind Image across the world, trade with some big labels. Perhaps sign up a new band and release a new album. I’ve already got an awesome offer, an album which I’m carefully pursuing, which I hope to bring out by mid-year. Lets jus say, it’s gonna be the biggest underground Indian release since 1991!!

If you had to change something from the year gone by what would that be?
On a musical front, nothing I guess. Maybe a little more foresight as far as the label goes but nothing to regret, and nothing I would change. If anything, I’d probably change my location from the edge of Gujarat back to Chennai, where I’d have been able to play metal live and perhaps change the course of this entire interview!

How do you think the Indian rock scene will change from 2010 onwards?
I don’t want to be negative, and I think the next few words will probably make me extremely unpopular.

I feel the scene in India is slowly getting saturated, with loads of bands that sound exactly like the next. There’s no variety, nothing new to look forward to at a gig or in a new release. We’ve got some pretty awesome bands here, but hardly anything that can put us up on a world stage alongside the real musical powerhouses. Even the best bands that have released successful albums sounds like the music I heard as I was growing up. There are dozens of American and Canadian bands that sound like some of the best Indian bands, and unless we put our music up several notches or get some variety factor, we’re hardly going to be able to take our stand alongside the Megadeths and Slayers of the world. And that’s where we should be aiming.

Having said all that, I have utmost faith in the Indian music scene, having been a part of it for the better part of 6 years, which isn’t a lot, but enough to tell me what we’re capable of. I believe that we have it in us to step up to the challenge and deliver the music that the world wants to hear.

Cheers!

[ Interview questions compiled by Ashwin Sharma ]

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