This whole culture around concept albums and music that’s made ‘around a story’, so to speak, is an odd one. People are always wondering whether one needs to know the story behind it all to be able to properly ‘get’ the music; the answer is that there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do anything. It’s music at the end of the day. Take this new EP from Chennai composer Prashanth Venkat, ‘The Lottery’. It’s based on a short story of the same name and is 10 minutes of ‘concept’ music in that regard. It doesn’t have a word, it’s loaded with piano and strings and the fact that it has a connection to a story is more of a ‘bonus points’ situation. The EP is a great listen on its own.

The reason for this is that it does what music is supposed to do in the first place whether there is an external stimulus or not, which to create a mood and a narrative. ‘The Lottery’ has theater and mood in ample amounts, so it’s an immersive listen right off the bat. While ‘As We Were’ presents a relatively somber picture, ‘Unnerved’ takes it into precisely that. ‘The Chosen One’ is a piece of reflection, dread and an almost resigned frame of mind. ‘The Banality Of Evil’ that closes out the EP is its grisly, doom-bringing conclusion; all this doesn’t need any external information or narrative to explain itself (though the experience is enhanced with it); the whole point is that it’s more than listenable to begin with. The pianos, strings and bits of other orchestration are written solidly and evoke the required feelings with an air of sincerity (unless it doesn’t live up to some classical standard or something, but to us regular people, it seems to sound nice). It’s also short, and 10 minutes isn’t all the time in the world to get ideas across. ‘The Lottery’ does.

Listen to the EP here.