Witchouse experiments to bring in new sounds

Just a year old, Witchouse, a band of passionate musicians has performed in leading hot spots in the city. It started with just two friends, Arunava Chaki (vocalist and guitarist) and Shounak Chakraborthy (guitarist), who started jamming together. Ramkumar Kanakrajan, a second-year engineering student at KCG College of Technology (drummer) and Komal Venkatesh, who is doing his final-year engineering in the same college (bass player) later joined the band. Witchouse officially started functioning in April 2012. Though their main genre is rock, they also experiment with different styles of music and come up with new compositions. Some of their hit compositions include The Last Ride, Consequential Behaviour, Oblivion, The Chennai Song, The Sunset Jam, You and Am sorry. Arunava and Shounak now work in software companies.

Their first stage performance was at The Unwind Centre in Chennai. “Since each of us were into music for years, it was like just another jam and there was no debut blues,” says Ramkumar. The band has also played at the Geoffrey’s pub (Unseen Underground), Design Arts and Music Fest (DAM), Puducherry, UNMAAD (IIM-Bangalore) cultural fest and the Indo German Urban Mela, Chennai.

Their list of role models includes Led Zeppelin, Bach and Beethoven. The band draws inspiration from various bands to mix and match different sounds. They are open to guest performances and to add more players in the band. “We have not had any guest performance in the band till date, but we would love to include guests if the music demands,” says Shounak. We can look forward to an EP (Extended Play) from Witchouse soon.

— malavikkasridharan@gmail.com