Mumbai based Kastadyne is a two piece Alternative rock (studio) band featuring Sheldon Fonseca on Vocals/Lyrics and Tejas Narayan on guitars/music. Kastadyne’s 2007 debut release ‘Eleven Complaints’ was a instant on hit  as the hit single ‘Victim of my Anger’ went on to become the #1 single on Soundclclick.com’s alternative rock charts. Kastadyne recently launched its second album titled  ‘Hover’, the album features 12 of its best tracks, we caught up with Sheldon Fonseca for a quick interview, here’s what he had to say..

IRMP3 : Hey Sheldon, thanks for taking time for this  interview, briefly, tell our readers about Kastadyne? How it all began?
Sheldon : Thanks so much for interviewing us. Kastadyne started 5 years ago as just a little hobby. Since then Tejas (music & backing vocals) and me (lyricist & lead vocals) have been constantly experimenting with sounds and tones. Our first album, Eleven Complaints, is all about our experiments and our latest album, Hover, is about us finally finding a solid sound for the band.

IRMP3 : What genre of music do you consider your work to be? Who are your major influences?
Sheldon : We’re always stumped when asked this question. But i guess you could say we’re a band grounded in alternative rock with a few electronica elements thrown in. Our influences are Tool, Rage Against The Machine, Sleeping People, Nirvana, Karnivool, Tera Melos, Beatles, Porcupine Tree, etc.

IRMP3 : Your second album Hover was launched on April 16th, tell us a little bit about the making of Hover, Whats the story behind the album title?
Sheldon : After Eleven Complaints, we wanted to really get a firm sound for the band. Hover is the sound we always wanted. Most of the songs were recorded in a span of 2 years. This left the last song to sound drastically different from the first one. Normally we wouldn’t have cared, but this time we went back to older songs and added more textures, percussion and more textures giving all our songs a slightly similar feeling. The title is loosely based on one of the songs in the album called, Come Hover Above Earth. But Hover really stands for our effort in finally refining our sound.

IRMP3 : You guys are ‘mostly’ a studio band, with the release of second album any plans to perform live?
Sheldon : We are only a studio band There was a patch in the middle where for a year we did play live. But we would never come close matching our studio on stage, we like have up to 7 guitars in some songs . A lot of bands don’t experiment enough because they’re not sure if they can pull it off live. We don’t have to worry about that. And anyways, Tejas will be going abroad for studying sound engineering and it’s real easy to manage a studio band from another country.

IRMP3 :  Musically/lyrically how different is ‘Hover’ from your debut album ’11 complaints’? Is there feeling that the band has come of age?
Sheldon : Yes, the writing and composition has become more complex, meaningful and organized. A lot of the writing is based on my own life and my views on it. We’ve tried out a lot of odd time signatures and fooling around with song structures. In Come Hover Above Earth, no part except for a chorus ever repeats. We’ve grown a lot since the first album.

IRMP3 : How can fans buy/download ‘Hover’ ?
Sheldon : Hover will be available in Furtado’s shortly. It will also be available on iTunes, cdrack.com and CDbaby. The flaming Skulls Podcast will also be selling the cds.

If you want to listen to some of the songs from Hover, we’re on last.fm.

IRMP3 : Any thanks you notes, shout outs, abuses?
Sheldon : We thank IRMP3 for featuring us! Awesome Questions! We also thank Propellheads, makers of Reason, the best software for electronic music!

IRMP3 : And the last famous words are..
Sheldon : “Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity”
(it got us through our album)