Founded by Srinagar native Zeeshaan Nabi (vocals, guitar, keys), and made complete by Kerala-born Ayan Joe (bass) and Srinath S. Kumar (drums), rock band Ramooz spent eight months conceptualising and recording their first studio album in Nabi’s Meerakii studio in Kashmir.
During that time in Srinagar, Article 370 was abrogated and a lockdown was imposed. The families of the two South Indian band members grew worried and tried to get them to return to their Delhi homes as soon as flights were resumed. But loyal to their artistic endeavour and the many tasks at hand, the two, Ayan and Srinath, were able to convince their families of the urgency of their studio album project, since it was midflight in the band’s creative process.
The album was recorded in Srinagar, with parts of its first track, Aalav, re-recorded, mixed, and mastered at Seven Point Studios in New Delhi last month. The official music video was released on 6 June 2020 at 7 pm, getting more than 42,000 views within five days of its launch.
Aalav, translated from Kashmiri as “the calling” or “the call”, is sung entirely in the Kashmiri language and comes across as a song of lamentation and grief, much like an elegy laced with the longing for a mother.
Before the pandemic struck, Ramooz had performed at The Piano Man, Gurugram, on 5 January. Their exquisite performance consisted of a set-list that lasted for nearly three hours, exhilarating the audience with their originals ranging from an amalgam of jazz, blues, progressive rock, and Kashmiri folk. Fans of the trio have since been waiting for the launch of the album, and the wait finally culminates with Ramooz dropping their first number Aalav from the album.
Ramooz’s debut number puts the band a step ahead of their contemporaries especially given the fact the trio has pursued music academically, which is reflected in their signature sound. While the percussionist Srinath and the bassist Ayan have studied music from Delhi University and Chennai’s Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music respectively, the frontman of the band Zeeshan Nabi has studied from A.R. Rahman’s K.M. College of Music and Technology, and partly in The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music in Australia. The academic insights of the three-man enable them to experiment with a multiversed approach to musical genres, especially with their intricate harmonies and uncustomary time signatures.
With this new and first release, Ramooz’s Aalav music video contains multiple storylines and scenography that do not follow a linear trajectory or a simple plotline. A protagonist, a young Kashmiri man in his 20s, opens his eyes and walks within a home that is seemingly his, with photos of family and loved ones on the walls, while all sorts of people, from an actual mother figure and strangers crowding the hallways of the house, are masked with their faces covered in black. The video suggests estrangement from reality or existence beyond its palpable dimensions, such that either the protagonist is a ghost or those surrounding him are ghosts while he is from the world of the living. The other interpretation, of many, is that the protagonist walks into a dream or out of it to find an eerie scene of devastation much like visualisations of debris from a world that once was.