Rahul's new album - Antarisksh

21 Oct 2007: Express India

While Richard Branson, in his galactic dreams, sees tourists floating in suborbital spaceflights, santoor player Rahul Sharma (above, with father Shiv Kumar Sharma) is exploring space with his delicate mallets striking the dulcimer. His latest album, Antariksh, is about starbursts and constellations that were a childhood fascination.

“Star Trek has always enamoured me,” says Sharma, who calls, rather grandiosely, the sound of his album as celestial trance. “The santoor is obviously there but I’ve also played the Persian santoor in this collection,” says Sharma.

The seven-track album — with an electronic groove of the bass — anyway sounds different from the regular classical fusion that one hears a lot these days. This one is Sharma’s fortieth album and he is hitting a different note. “It is certainly more bizarre,” he admits. But then what drives his music, he says, is an element of mystery, concepts that are topical with a bit of futuristic appeal. There is a bit of sci-fi in all the tracks, especially in Aliens Trek, Milky Way and Chandrayan I, that is named after India’s unmanned lunar mission.

Having composed for Mujhse Dosti Karoge in the past and had Lata Mangeshkar sing in his first Bollywood venture, Sharma says he wants to do things differently. “Films take up a lot of time so I’m comfortable doing one project in two years,” he says, letting on that a couple of films that he has made music for are under-production.

Sharma, who has collaborated and performed with French pianist Richard Clayderman, is also ready with the second part of The Confluence, due for release early next year. But it is the six-city US tour with Ustad Zakir Hussain that he is looking forward to post the album launch. “I enjoy the variation I get in composing contemporary songs for my albums and then switching to pure classical live performances,” he says. Well there’s certainly enough space to do everything.