Peepal Tree’s music can be described as Indian melodies sitting on funky grooves with overtones of electronica, and sung in a variety Indian languages. Peepal Tree, attaches a lot of importance to the message they convey lyrically, apart from their musicality on their recorded material and at live performances. The lyrics range from a variety of social issues such as human disregard for the environment, to more philosophical ideas, nudging us at times to hold up a mirror to ourselves. They are heavily inspired by literary and philosophical giants of Karnataka, namely Rashtrakavi Kuvempu, Dara Bendra and Santa ShishunaLa Sharif.
The supergroup, was born out of the fervent desire of four friends, all musicians, who wanted to incorporate each others’ musical abilities, leanings and knowledge, to write ‘good songs’.
They wanted to document their individual musical impressions into a collective expression that would test their ability to write music, representing all the factors that they loved about different kinds of music, while at the same time, keeping them miles away from sounding ‘very esoteric or self-indulgent’. While the band started working on music together in 2011, they found their rhythm to roll only by 2014.
The band was chosen by All India Radio to represent the country in theABU (Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union) Radio Song Festival in 2015 and happens to be the only band from India to have done so till now. The band has also performed with world renowned musicians like Jojo Mayer from the band Nerve, and Christian Galvez.
The Bangalore based band — that doesn’t believe in shackles that come with genre-based descriptions — comprises of Sujay Harthi on vocals, Tony Das on guitars, Praveen Biligiri on bass, Willy Demoz on drums and Siddharth Kamath on keyboards. Each musician in the band brings a wealth of experience to this project, having been a part of the Hindi and Kannada movie industries, apart from playing in some of the most successful bands from India, namely The Raghu Dixit Project, Thermal & A Quarter, Moksha, Sandeep Chowta Project and Bhoomi among others.
Latest Release:
Nayi Khushi talks about new found happiness that stems from something as simple as lying under a night sky filled with stars… And the state of happiness that cannot be described in words. The track was released as a part of the band’s debut album Chetana and has been one of their top hits with the audience. The track is by far one of their most popular Hindi songs and the band has been inundated with requests from fans for a dedicated music video for it. While the band had put out a lockdown jam video during the first phase of lockdown in India, the demand for a proper video still kept coming. Therefore, the all new video came to life — solely on the basis of the audience’s demand and features some unreleased footage of PT along with some fresh visuals that were shot recently.
Past Releases by Peepal Tree
Chetana | Album : Their first official album titled Chetana was released in October, 2018 and the rose to #1 on the iTunes Rock Charts (India) and #3 on the iTunes overall album charts (India) within hours of the album hitting the online stores, among others.
Chetana was the coming together of diverse musical influences, stitched together in 10 songs by 4 passionate musicians. The purpose was the album is no different from the band’s raison d’être — to play music together, on stage and while doing so, make a sincere attempt at writing good music. The album has 6 Kannada songs, 3 Hindi and 1 Tamil song. In these one can find traces of rock, pop, funk, heavy metal and everything in between. Chetana in 2019 had made it to the ballots of the 62nd Grammy Awards, in the Best Rock Album category.
Cauvery | Single: On the very first day of its release, their December 2019 single Cauvery climbed to the no.1 position on iTunes’ Indian Rock charts, just as their first official album Chetana. Cauvery, pays tribute to the incredible lifeline of south India. Though the mighty Cauvery has a huge impact on the lives of people of 3 states of South India, the sentiment of the song can be attributed to any river, rivulet or tributary anywhere in the world. For at its core, the song celebrates our most vital resource — one that we share with all forms of life on this beautiful planet.
560001 | EP: The 4 track EP with Chowta titled 560001. The album pays tribute to their favourite city-Bangalore or Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. The album was released on Chowta’s music label Namma Music in March, 2020.
With all the signature Peepal Tree finesse in place in the album, the sound is a bit of a departure from their usual fare. Sandeep has been a friend right from the starting days of this band and one of its biggest supporters. They worked on one song together (composing/directing vocals for Roshane Kaafile) during PT’s debut album Chetana and discussed the possibility of doing something together since then.
