Chord progression

While in college,Basrur experimented with drugs,but it got out of hand. “I used to sit on the pavement right outside the college gate and roll joints. I remember people in the music scene would be scared of me,because I was that messed up,” says Basrur,who is now a teetotaller.

Basrur dropped out of college in his first year of graduation because he bagged a sales job at a music store,which paid him Rs 6,000 — five grand more than his pocket money. After he quit that a year-and-a-half later,Basrur’s dependency on marijuana,alcohol and prescription drugs got worse. He remembers an incident where he met with four bike accidents on the same night. “Before I got back home,I went to a drug store and picked up more pills. That’s how bad things were,” he says.

Through this time,he was earning his chops in the indie scene singing for the now-iconic punk act Kinky Ski Monkey. In 2002,however,Basrur finally went to rehab even if just to please his mother. Following a 15-month stint there,he came out clean. Basrur stayed away from indie gigs (to stay away from people who might tempt him) for another 10 months and then enrolled himself in a sound engineering course. “When I finally returned to the scene,I realised people didn’t want to hang around with me. They’d say hello,but there was no warmth,” he says. Things changed for him after he joined djent act Goddess Gagged.

After working for various studios as a sound engineer for three years,Basrur decided that a career in sound was not for him. He joined Channel [V as a content writer in 2008,but kept jumping jobs every six months,secretly nursing a dream to make music his full-time job. As soon as his contract to compose for the film Haunted 3D came through,Basrur quit the job.

Today,Basrur is at ease when he says that putting in his papers was easy. But he didn’t have any money-making projects in hand. His bands through the years had brought him only indie stardom,and he was still a newbie to the sessions music world. “I used to get hold of numbers of production houses from friends and would cold call them saying,‘I am a new singer. I have two tracks. Can you take five minutes and listen to them?’,” recalls Basrur.

The decision to quit a steady job could have been an April Fool’s prank he was playing on himself,but life has changed for the better. While his album Chasing Rain cemented his place in the indie scene as a singer-songwriter,his music today is changing.

His latest project with guitarist Vishal J Singh is The Library,an instrumental progressive/post-rock act,a clear departure from his forlorn love ballads. He is also composing music under the moniker Okakifreak,a solo electronic music act. Basrur has got the look of a kid showing off his new toys,as he plays scratches of both his jingles and his indie music. He’s trashing some of it,apologising for playing a few of them,but ultimately happy. “Music is the only thing that gets me any creative inspiration today. I have stopped reading,and hardly watch movies. I have to make music to keep sane.”

kevin.lobo@expressindia.com