Indian Ocean to distribute songs for free

New Delhi: After a long lull, `Indian Ocean` is ready to rock music lovers with back to back releases, and this time it will be for free.

The fusion band has composed for Aamir Khan`s `Peepli Live`, and an album `16/320 Khajur Road`, their first in five and half years after `Black Friday`, will be out in July, free to the fans. "This time we`re distributing our songs for free. Come to our website, register yourself and the MP3 songs will be delivered to you. We will deliver one song in a month," Rahul Ram, the band`s bass guitarist and vocalist, told reporters. The decision was taken by the band as they were unhappy with the music companies who are not ready to put out anything except film music. "16/320 Khajur Road, is it not a strange title -- it is close to us. The address is of a bungalow in Karol Bagh, where we used to practice since 1997. Music for Black Friday, Jhini, Khandisa, and these eight songs (of the lined album) were composed there," said Ram. The album has the last songs of Asheem Chakravarty, band`s leading tabla player who died last year due to cardiac arrest. "The album is pretty emotional to us, Asheem gave 30 years of his life to the band. We are trying out people to fill his place, but no one fits into his shoes," said the band`s vocalist and percussionist Amit Kilam. The band had been busy composing songs for films during their five-year-long hiatus, but none saw the light of day. "We composed songs for Bhoomi, which got stalled. Then there was `Halla`, which was taken out of theatres just after 3 days of release. We were composing for Anurag Kashyap`s Shot, but the film has not begun shooting yet," Ram explained. The band`s influences vary from social movements to Catholic prayers and the members say that their music is an expression of themselves. "I was closely associated with Narmada Bachao Andolan and that inspired me to compose the rustic song of valley `Ma Reva` into a rock-fusion. `Jhini` was for a movie `Swaraj` with a traditional touch. Khandisa, though we don`t know the meaning of that song but the Syrian Catholic verses, inspired us. These songs were great success," said Kilam. "I was in my 20`s, Ashemm was in early 30`s when we released our first album (Indian Ocean) in 1993. Amit was just of 12-year-old. So we had balance and maturity in our band. This helped us to control our ego," said Ram. PTI