Part 2

The title of the new album translates to “dreamland.” Is improvisation like a dream for you? In these improvisations, did you feel a strong sense of personal presence or did you (or your ego) “disappear”?   

We’re very interested in how India itself is a very dreamlike concept, founded in those foundational Indian ideals I mentioned earlier, like self-actualization and pluralism and so on. 

Nations, identities and our shared histories are often built upon dreams. SHOPNOBHUMI, the dreamland, picks apart those dreams, and confronts idealized notions that have built our identity and nationhood. 

It also addresses another cost of those idealisms: separation. The album’s most yearning moments speak to the separation of two entities who seem ill-fated to never encounter; yet, on the rare occasion they do, are met by violent disarray.

SHOPNOBHUMI has been referred to as treating sound as archaeology. What makes sound such a great tool to both capture and excavate memories?  

In our debut album, we were quite interested in seeing the remnants of Indian idealism held within its visual and print archives – those archives became essential building blocks for our first version of excisedept.com, our first series of video works and early aesthetic sensibility. 

Now, we’ve turned that gaze into an act of listening, where rote-learnt rhymes, patriotic songs and folk motifs contain those same remnants we were trying to uncover in our first album. 

I think these sonics embody ideas of longing, separation, identity and nationhood in a very unassuming manner, mainly because they are a sort of collective folklore in our world; ideas that transmit freely between people and often get distorted or mis-remembered and mis-represented in the process.

What are the lyrics on SHOPNOBHUMI about and how do words and music work together from your perspective? 

Both aspects are very important for us, but at the same time, SHOPNOBHUMI can be enjoyed without any understanding of the words. 

A lot of artists that we admire and take inspiration from are from non-English speaking parts of the world, whose works are often presented without translation. We listen to and watch their work as is, and it resonates with us deeply even before “understanding” it. Of course, sometimes we’ll go out of our way to find those translations, but very often we don’t. 

That’s sort of how we see EXCISE DEPT as well – it has layers that can be peeled back and further explored, or it can be absorbed viscerally, immediately. 

SHOPNOBHUMI broadly explores the layered experience of 1947: the partition of India, Pakistan and eventually, of Bangladesh. While the independence of India will obviously be painted as a victory in history books, it came with a violent and traumatic cost: separation. 

On ‘GHONO GHENNA’, for instance, we re-interpret a popular Bengali patriotic song, where India is referred to as one’s motherland. We suggest in our work that it’s not just our motherland, but also a dreamland, and a deathland too. 

How would you describe your relationship with the different languages that you surrounded by and their role for the music within EXCISE DEPT?

The two major languages in this album, as was the case with our debut, are Punjabi and Bengali (the album title is Bengali). Both these languages are from Indian states where the partition actually took place. 

Separation, especially in the cultural context of partition, holds complex, emotional weight in these states. One finds the trauma of partition deeply embedded in Bengali and Punjabi folklore, poetry, song and cinema – and we see SHOPNOBHUMI as something that hopefully contributes something meaningful to that canon. 

What was the process of constructing the finished album from the improvisations like? 

Our album process is one of constant experimentation, re-writing, re-interpretation, re-working. While there aren’t a lot of samples in this album – at least in the way one thinks about samples for the most part – there are a lot of ideas taken from older demos, a lot of instrumental passages that are chopped up and placed upon another, a lot of this sort of collage-esque approach, all over the album. 

It was recorded in so many different places – some songs were born out of an improvised jam at Rounak’s house in Navi Mumbai, eventually re-composed at Sanjay’s studio in Bandra, and then finally refined at Abbey Road before it got sent for mastering to Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering in Berlin. 

[Read our Stefan Betke / Pole interview about mastering] 

Each song has had a complex, storied journey of its own, sometimes getting fragmented and broken apart at its core to reveal exciting contents within. 

It’s cliched to perhaps say this, but it truly was a labour of love and pure honesty. Honesty, because the final album, while carefully composed and arranged, proudly wears a lot of its impurities, mistakes and glitches on its sleeve. 

Your album seems to place great value on the importance of remembering and preserving what matters. Conversely, jazz musician Joe Tatton told me: “Forgetting is important as I think that’s where new ideas are born.” How do you see that yourself?

We are equally interested in the act of remembering as much as we are the act of forgetting – because remembering is a form of forgetting as well. It is always an act of selective remembrance. 

SHOPNOBHUMI isn’t an attempt to get people to remember the partition – it isn’t a history lesson by any means. However, it is an exploration of the cracks in our own memory; how we have collectively chosen to remember that fateful year; how we all decide what to remember and what to forget. 

SHOPNOBHUMI closes with the gorgeous "KAR MILONO CHAU." It is a moment of pure beauty after an intense journey. Would you say that after going through the recording of this album, there was a sense of release and healing? Is the notion of music as catharsis real? 

We absolutely believe in the cathartic power of music and it has been a place of solace and fulfillment for us over the last few years. 

This album is something that we had generally been exploring for many years at this point – with the general idea that we wanted to make something slow-moving, ambient, deliberate and heavy. 

As we all cross the age of 30, life has really turned into a completely different journey for us too. SHOPNOBHUMI is the sort of release that aptly marks this point in our lives.