What's in ooru's Toto' bag?

The social media handles of the Bengaluru-based Toto Music Awards have been teasing us with their 2017 award nominees for awhile. In one picture, they were all seen jamming together as well. Now, it’s time. As of January 7, we’ll see Bengaluru-based Disco Puppet aka Shoumik Biswas and pop-rock band Opposite Sex vie for the top spot at the 13th edition of the awards, along with Jaipur’s electronica sound magician, Ujjwal Agarwal aka Kalab. While you can catch them live at blueFROG on January 6, we thought it’s time you got to know them a little better.

Disco Puppet aka Shoumik Biswas
Shoumik loves experimenting with sounds and it probably explains why you’ll see a (lot) of tambourines, shakers and flutes lying about his space. “I mostly put out sounds that I resonate with or something that brings back memories,” he says. For the awards, he sent in his Oriental Heart that put him on the path to winning. “What I remember distinctly about this track is the first heavy section that comes in with the chiming of the ship horn, it’s like an attack of sorts, not particularly sure, on what. But that was what I was going for,” says the lad from Kolkata who is now based out of the city and also plays for post rock band, Space Behind the Yellow Room. Starting out by playing drums in college, later dabbling in ‘computer stuff’, he now works in design too. “This is like a big social experiment that I’m doing with myself now,” he adds.

Opposite Sex
Consisting of Ragini Ramanathan, Siddharth Gautam and Prabhu Muraleedharan, this band belts out everything from smooth jazz pop to chick-rock. Think ‘Police meets Fergie by the way of Steely Dan’ if you must. “We used to play at clubs across the city and come back home. We weren’t in competition mode when we entered for the Awards. In fact, we had 15 minutes to the deadline and were the last entry,” says the band’s vocalist and bassist Ragini, who is stoked to even feature on the list, let alone be one of the top three contenders. While recovering from an injury in 2016, the band’s members made their online presence felt by putting out their self-titled debut EP, a window into the band’s life. “This year, we are looking at a full-length album. We are also pushing for more gigs outside of Bengaluru,” says Ragini.

Kalab aka Ujjwal Agarwal
Ujjwal’s moniker, KALAB can interestingly be broken down as KAL-AB literally meaning ‘The future/past is now.’ Known for his theatrical electronica with experimental futuristic arrangements, the Jaipur-based musician picked up his sound having lived in multiple cities and that’s resonant in his entry track for the awards, Bottom of the Barrel. As he tells us, it’s sheer idea of being able to create a sophisticated piece of music right from your laptop, that got him hooked to producing electronic music. “I use a lot of iPad apps in my production process, I gather selected samples, process them heavily with effects and filters, and work a lot on effecting them prior to arrangement,” says Ujjwal who believes he’s strictly a bedroom producer working with basic
gear.