If you’re an active consumer of both indie and commercial music in this country (as big as the Venn intersection of the two has become over the last few years), both Mumbai-based musical artists Donn Bhat and Isheeta Chakravarty will be familiar names to you. And if you’re a fan of both, this particular collaboration should excite you quite a bit. Donn and Isheeta both have long lists of credits and projects in ‘the biz’, so a collaboration between the two was always going to be solid. However ‘Garaj’ is not just a good song but an interesting, different-from-the-norm piece of music that surprises and delights just as much as it ‘meets expectedly high standards’.

What makes ‘Garaj’ interesting is that it allows both artists’ styles to remain the same throughout. You have Isheets flexing her vocal chops from start to finish; Her strident delivery has obvious influences from Hindustani classical, and she doesn’t seem to forgo the necessary technical elements. This sits on top of Donn’s arrangement and production, which is just so him. There’s a rhythm that combines a mean four-on-the-floor kick with some loops and a layered groove that sounds straight of something like Radiohead’s The King Of Limbs. That lives with an incredible bassline, some brooding ambience in the intro (that’s not a didgeridoo, is it? Edit: Donn says it's a Moog synth that interested him because it sounded like one), and a bunch of other subtle touches. There’s a little psychedelic guitar, and also some vocals from Donn himself that serve both as a hook and a vocal counterpoint.

There’s a lot of sonic stuff you will discover as you listen to the song again and again, but the most obviously compelling thing about ‘Garaj’ is that sounds as natural as it does. Almost every attempt at genre bending or fusion requires some amount of compromise; Donn Bhat and Isheeta Chakravarty keep that to the bare minimum, and the final product still sounds like their disciplines or styles were always meant to live together in the same house. That’s good synergy, and it makes for good music. Enjoy!