Collaborations remain one of the best ways to grow in today's rapidly changing music economy.
A good collaboration is the indicator of an artist's rise to greater success. Music collaborations in the digital era have the ability to prolong a song's popularity and relevance. Case in point- Aswekeepsearching's track 'Glued' being reinterpreted and repackaged in collaboration with Assam based Singer/ Songwriter ShankurajKonwar in the form of a new song called 'Ovotaar'. The song is being released via No Binary Records.
Aswekeepsearching is India's premiere post rock band- they've played alongside acts like DuaLipa, God is an astronaut, Katy Perry, Joe Satriani, performed at almost all the premiere music festivals in India, toured extensively throughout the world, sold out shows in places like Russia and Europe (a feat seldom heard from Indian bands!), topped streaming charts in their genre for years now, released their own fashion merchandise line amongst many other laurels. ShankurajKonwar is a household name in the Assamese community today- especially after his 2020 hit single 'Alakananda' that eventually became the first Assamese song to hit a million streams on music streaming service Spotify. It currently stands at 8.5 million streams on YouTube alone. So it isn't a surprise that their collaborative single 'Ovotaar' marks a key moment in both the Indian Independent music landscape and the Assamese music industry given that the nature of the intersection is one of its kind.
This collaboration first came into being during March 2021 when Shankuraj joined Aswekeepsearching on stage for their performance at No Binary's multi-genre music festival 'Fusefest'. At the festival that saw a packed house that night, the two acts performed collaborative versions of each other's songs- one of which was a mash-up of the hit single 'Alakananda' and the other being a reprise version of aswekeepsearching's 2020 release 'Glued' (from their Ep – Sleep) which they renamed to 'Ovotaar'. "It is an out the box collaboration for us but we knew we would be releasing music together the moment we played our first note together" says bassist Robert Alex. "There's something about Shankuraj's distinctive approach to songwriting that transcends genres and forms and speaks to us as musicians. He has a ton of great songwriting ideas and we can't wait to explore what the future holds for us."
However, this isn't the first time Aswekeepsearching is in the news in Assam. This is in fact their second single in Assamese, the first being 'EnekeNajaba' from their album 'Rooh'. The band has constantly packed shows in Guwahati for the past half a decade especially in collaboration with the Indie front 'Qrated'. The band is fronted by Vocalist and Guitarist Uddipan Sarmah whose parents originally belong to Jorhat.
The new single 'Ovotaar' speaks of a protagonist, praying to the almighty to revisit the human realm in the form of an "avatar" and purge all darkness and chaos therein. This conceptually spoke to all the members of the band, who spent the following months in a constant effort to get it to sound just the way they all wanted it to.
In keeping with the premise of the track, the artwork beautifully depicts the transformative process of a man into a tree, making him the Ovotaar. "Humans today are losing their very essence of life: humanity, letting their souls fall into darkness. On the other hand, nature goes berserk just to purge this darkness. We humans seek the light to guide us in this journey and as we learn the insignificance of human life when viewed through the grand lens of the universe, we pray to the avatar to show us the solution to this darkness residing within us. Unknown to us, the key fact that we have forgotten is that the light is within us and all the answers lie at the feet of nature. We are nature, we are the earth, we are the universe and if you want, you can be the Ovotaar to put everything at peace." says Tanaya Sharma, the artist behind the artwork.