- #HGCREATORS
- #HGEXPLORE
- #HGVOICES
- #HGSHOP
- CAREERS
- ABOUT US
- CONTACT US
A significant part of growing up is trying to find your sense of belonging in the world. For singer-songwriter and music composer, Rounak Maiti, music has been a cathartic way of understanding his sense of belonging in a world that felt fragmented by his identity of belonging to two places. Born in Cleveland to Bengali parents and raised in Mumbai only to return to the USA for college, Rounak struggled with questions of identity. His lo-fi bedroom pop music trajectory till now was reflective of this internal turmoils. But Maiti is now back with another single that is testament to his evolving sound both at a personal and sonic level.
His latest single, ‘Interrupt Me’ revolves around the theme of dropping one’s ego and moving forward in the journey towards self-discovery. Sonically, the single strays away from the scratchy sense of lo-fi aesthetic with tones of nostalgia that Maiti is known for and progresses towards a more experimental and danceable sound.
Much like Maiti’s previous work, this single too draws inspiration from his personal and lived experience. He says of the single, “It seems apropos that Interrupt Me, a song which has floated in the ether as a demo from November 2017 (!), a song about the dissolving of my ego, a song where I question my tendencies toward self-centeredness, releases at the start of this year. I find myself on a very different musical path now—not one which diverges from my past, but one that has introduced a lot of new methods, new styles, new ideas.”
The video for the single is true to his style and follows this sense of not-belonging that we are familiar with in his work. He tells us, “The landscapes we found in Goa had this wonderful quality of not belonging to any place, space or time, and through carefully selecting objects to allow into our created universe, I wanted to forget that Satyajit and Rajdeep (actors in the music video) occupied a ‘real’ place of any kind... I wasn’t actually thinking about my upbringing or the fragile nature of family history while working on this piece of music, but as I’ve found through most of the music I’ve made thus far, some of the most fascinating things happen unintentionally.”
If this single is in fact a true reflection of his evolving sound, we can’t wait for what more he has to offer in the coming year.
Checkout Rounak’s Instagram here.
If you enjoyed reading this article, we suggest you also read:
