Ahmedabad might not be the first place you look towards when searching for new discoveries in music, much less hoping to find a band that fuses post-rock and ambient music with Hindi vocals. But hey! Things have changed. Last year, an application manager from Bangalore, a high school graduate, and a musician living in Pune came together in their hometown, Ahmedabad, to create some soulful music. The result of countless hours of jamming with the fairly unique mindset toward music was As We Keep Searching. Vocalist and guitarist Uddipan Sarmah tells us: “Counting the influences will be a very long list, so I’ll limit it to things that have influenced us to create this kind of music. Basically we started with doing many other projects; but this kind of music was mostly influenced by God is an Astronaut, Explosions in the Sky. Ashwin listens to a lot of Karnivool.” “I follow a lot of Karnivool man, Steve Judd is a mad drummer dude”, drummer Ashwin Naidu chimes in. “Shubham is influenced by Mutemath a lot, so [with] all of these things put together we thought of creating something Indian with a lot of post rock elements. But, at the same time I used to do Hindi vocals, so I thought, ‘Why not experiment with trying to put Hindi vocals in it?’ It was something new that we came up with.”

The band’s first release was a single, ‘The Tattva’ which raked in considerable appreciation internationally. Uddipan, explaining the meaning behind the song as a question to the reality we perceive, says: “Tattva is a Sanskrit word and it means reality, so with that meaning we can put so many things into it. But, what I did while writing the lyrics was to talk about the human mind. Like, how someone is lost in his or her own mind. We keep trying to find so many things in our daily lives, but still we are lost. And what we want to project through the musical and the instrumental section is that: ‘OK, everything is available and close to you but you’re not opening your eyes and realizing who you are.’ ” They’ve also released a second single, titled ‘Aakorxon’, which means ‘attraction’ in Assamese.

Stream 'The Tattva' below:

It would be hard to argue the fact that a post rock band emerging from within the local music scene could be a frightfully tantalizing prospect. More so, if the act happens to emerge from a city that is not too big on the music-map. Uddipan tells us, “See, in Ahmedabad there is no band that we can kind of follow. Even if you look at the whole of Gujarat, there are no bands that a budding artist can follow in the footsteps of or look at to be inspired. So we spent time in finding out what exactly we can do being in this state. Because, for me, it is very easy; people hear my name and automatically link it to Bangalore. But this time, we sat here and tried creating a band that was from Ahmedabad. Because it is very important we stay here most of the time and we look around for gigs in Mumbai and Delhi and other states where the scene is happening. Here, we do have a lot of talented musicians but it’s all about getting inspired and chasing what you really want to do.” Ashwin tells us: “We haven’t gotten a chance to see a lot of people in Ahmedabad reacting to our music; of course there are some friends who have supported us. Not a lot of people know about our music, yet. But we’re just getting there.”

Stream 'Aakorxon' below:

The band jams and records most of their music at the Blue Tree Studios, run by Uddipan himself. As We Keep Searching has, in essence, paved its own path in the music scene in Ahmedabad, functioning as intrinsic building blocks of the local independent music scene. They plan on releasing their six-track debut EP sometime in March this year. Keep an ear out!