Exclusive Interview with A Dot in The Sky Band

HBW News presents the Global Achievers Awards 2021 to A Dot in The Sky, a post-rock-ambient band for achievement in the music industry for Best Emerging Music Band. The band experiments on ambient & post-rock music to create the finest music. As music enthusiasts, the band coordinates with each other to produce the best lyrics and tunes. Here’s an exclusive interview with the band:

Please tell us a bit about your band A Dot in The Sky.

A DOT IN THE SKY is an Indian ambient-post-rock band from Kolkata, West Bengal. The band was formed in the summer of 2016 at Kasol, Himachal Pradesh. We have got recognition in Post-Rock Community, World Has Post Rock, and Where Post Rock dwells communities from overseas in the year 2017-18. 

A dot in the sky is a formation with its inbound ability to make experiments on ambient & post-rock music, depending on the principle of the genre band strongly believes in its definition of creating music. All songs are in Bengali, Hindi, and English language till date. 

Band members are Anny Ahmed (Vocal / Songwriter), Sudipto Paul (Founder / Composer / Keyboardist / Songwriter), Soutrik Banerjee (Bass Guitarist / Songwriter), Dipayan Chakraborty (Drummer), and Subhajit Goswami (Guitarist). They all are highly recognized musicians in Kolkata music circuits and play in different musical projects as well. This band “A Dot in the Sky” is like a project of satisfaction for all members. They devote time dedicatedly for this project to explore post-rock and ambient music for the first time in Bengal. We have 9 originals in our bucket.

What were the challenges that you faced initially and how did you overcome them?

We didn’t face such a difficult situation as everyone in our band is a music enthusiast. Every member of ADTS is a fantastic musician and world music lover, so all of them are giving their best. But yes, we did face some time crunch issues regarding rehearsals as all of them are multi-talented and do multi-work in their area of the genre.

What has been your most significant achievement?

Of course, receiving this honor of ‘Global Achievers Awards’. There are a few more. The band name got featured in the Post Rock Community in 2017 along with other Post Rock bands around the globe.“ WherePostRockDwells “ – Blogger / YouTube channel. They are promoting all kinds of post-rock music which is happening around the globe. They have released one of our originals – “ Shunnyota” & ‘Breath’ from their YouTube channel. Kind of surprising to us “WORLD HAS POST ROCK” – best known YouTube channel for promoting post-rock music. They have released “A DOT IN THE SKY”s – 1st EP from their youtube channel. Gaurab Chatterjee (Drummer, musician, music producer) featured in one of our original shows called ‘Jotsna’ released from Bengali original YouTube Project ‘Aprakashito season 2’. ‘Rolling Stone India’ has featured our last original ‘Change’ which was based on a pandemic situation. Winning the first prize and award in ‘The NEXT International Short Film Festivals 2020’ for our original ‘Onek Dur’ (A Long Way).

How do you come up with new ideas?

Generally, Sudipto Paul writes lyrics and comes up with various ideas and scratches then we all used to put our own inputs/ideas to give it a good shape. Vocalist Anny also writes lyrics and in our coming album, there are few songs that she has composed too. The same goes for our bassist Soutrik, sometimes he composes as in coming years we are going to work on those tracks. We are open to any good suggestions and ideas from every band member.

Who is your biggest inspiration?

Definitely world music and various genres that we all belong to. Every member of our band has good taste in music concerning genre. So, we all have multiple inspirations that we can collaborate on in our production. Being one Post-Rock & Ambient band, we love ‘Coldplay’, God is an Astronaut, Hammock, Mogwai, etc. Well there are many who inspired us to produce this genre of music in Bengal by incorporating our mother tongue, though ADTS is a multilingual band.

What motivates you?

Good work worldwide, good people and their achievements. Also, nature, hills, traveling, and daily life hurdles are the biggest motivation for our production.

What does a typical day look like for you?

A typical day must be filled up with various musical work, whether it’s our studio work or live music, or teaching. Maximum members are into different professions like teaching, music composer, programmer, session player, etc. A good day must be filled with productive musical work. If not musical then we must be traveling to the hills.

Who do you look toward for advice?

Well to all the younger musical aspirants only advice- Learn, practice, and play. Without proper knowledge of any genre and practice, no one can sustain for a long period. Also do not go for typical social media attractions like ‘views’, ‘viral’ & ‘likes. Keep moving with good meaningful production no matter how few people will play your music at least bring on some genuine audience.

How do you define success?

Success is a typical reflexive term. What is success to you that might not be to me, as we don’t believe being ‘viral’ is success, still our mentality says if maximum people know you that means you are successful. But for us, success is how much we can reach into authentic people with our new sound. We have been experimenting with a new genre here in West Bengal (India) since 2016 and after so many years we are being awarded this honor. We got much recognition worldwide despite many people being unaware of ADTS. It is a success to us and maybe it’s not viral so not so successful to many. So, it’s very much relative, the real meaning of success. But having said that winning ‘The Next International Short Film Festival 2020’, Recognition by Rolling Stones and Red FM indies Shuffle for ‘Change’ and ‘Kab Yeh Shaam Dhaley’, is a kind of a success we believe.

What are your plans for the coming years?

Well, we had planned to release our debut album from last year but due to the pandemic, the release date has been extended, and hopefully, by this year-end, we could gather ourselves along with musicians and people who supported us throughout this album release. Also, we are up with a few originals and covers releases on our official YouTube channel.