Indian Ocean back to Bollywood with `Peepli Live`

Mumbai: Fusion-rock band Indian Ocean returns to Bollywood after six years with Aamir Khan`s production venture ‘Peepli Live’.

"Anusha Rizvi (the director) came to us with this film five years ago and the minute we read the script, we said fantastic, lets do it. But she said, we need to wait till the time she arranges the funding," Rahul Ram, vocalist of the band told reporters. "That took a while till the time Aamir came on board and decided to produce it," he added. The band has composed two songs – ‘Darte ho’ and ‘Desh mera’ - for ‘Peepli Live’. "We were given a poem from which we composed `Darte ho`. It was given to us last January. Then it took us a long time to make it, it was not an easy song. We recorded it in mid July (2009)," revealed Rahul. "The other song `Des mera` is from our Genie album, which was released in 2003. Anusha wanted to use that song in the film. So few lyrics were changed and we recorded the new version in December," he added. Indian Ocean had earlier composed music for Anurag Kashyap`s ‘Black Friday’. The band was founded in 1984 by Susmit Sen (guitarist) and the late Asheem Chakravarty (vocalist, percussionist). In 1990, the band was officially named Indian Ocean and a year later, Rahul Ram joined it. In 1994, Amit Kilam came on board. The band is comprised of these four members since then. The band is being used to composing for their private albums, so do they get enough creative freedom when they make music for films? "We do very few films. Also, luckily whatever films we have worked on, we are given a lot of freedom. They just let us be as they approach us because they like our style of music. "They don`t want us to do something else. Like they don`t want us to something that maybe Annu Malek would do because he will do that much better than us," said Rahul. However, even though they believe that films has a larger reach, they still thrive on live performances. "There is no doubt about that fact that films have a much bigger reach but frankly doing live shows is still what Indian Ocean loves to do," Rahul told reporters. The band that has belted out albums like ‘Indian Ocean’ (1993), ‘Desert Rain’ (1997), ‘Kandisa’ (2000) and ‘Jhini’ (2004) are coming out with a new album after six years ‘16/330 Khajoor Road’. The songs will be available for downloading from their website (www.indianoceanmusic.com) from July 25. IANS