Aaryan Banthia likes experimentation. He also likes writing bangers. He’s done pop, rock, blues, country and pretty much every combination of them all. His new single, ‘Shades Of Spring’, brings something relatively interesting into the mix; Indian classical music and prog rock. It should be said that Aaryan isn’t invoking the relatively rigid and toxic dog-eared textbook of prog-fusion on a track that takes cues from the very machinery that Indian-Western prog-fusion was built on. It should be pretentious and exclusive, but Aaryan is a songwriter, so it isn't. The nice thing about ‘Shades Of Spring’ is that he understands the whole point of it all.

The whole point is that you don’t have to beat your audience up with incredibly complex theory and hints of mystic understanding (and often unnecessarily obtuse musical language; being smart for the sake of it). Aaryan (in conjuction with drumlord Sambit Chatterjee) understands that the point of merging genres is to bring out the best in everything that is involved. This is what follows; progressive chords, phenomenal guitar playing, a solo that will melt the paint off most buildings (he paid attention to prog rock in his youth and it is paying off big time; his playing choices say a lot), and a vocal delivery that doesn’t step on any of the aforementioned elements. The song doesn’t resolve or gift the listener resolution, but that’s a good thing, because what ‘Shades Of Spring’ (with its references to Basant which is said to be a spring Raag in spirit at its essence, which is what we like about it in the first place) provides is an experience. And a good one at that.