DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN is more than just an album. As I heard the tracks over and over again, I realized that the songs grow on you over time. There is something very ‘cult’ about the sound that Susmit Sen has developed, and if you listen to INDIAN OCEAN after this, you realize that this was the sound that you really liked about the band, and that Sen truly deserves all the credit that he gets for defining the sound that INDIAN OCEAN is so popular and much loved for. This is what I meant when I said “more than just an album”. An album like this, that, at least to me, makes me go back and appreciate the musical achievements of his career as part of another band, deserves more than just one listen.
The seven-track album is an attractive mix of his unique style and ideas all put together, collaborating with a varied set of musicians such as Shubha Mudgal, Papon, Nitin Malik and his late INDIAN OCEAN band mate Asheem Chakravarty. Each track has its share of catchy tunes, and several colorful shades of a single theme, be it the dark CITY LIGHTS, sung by Shubha Mudgal, or the classically inspired TRIBUTE, or the brilliant folk piece WILD EPIPHANY featuring Papon, or the dramatic and utterly beautiful ten-minute long DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN. Also worth mentioning is his small tribute to Rabindranath Tagore in the album; a soulful rendition of the national anthem in his style, aptly titled SIX STRING SALUTE.
What is this “sound of Susmit Sen” that is so talked about? It has to be the consistency that he achieves in the nature of the piece, because of his popular Jazz-guitar tendency to play only scales. He grabs your attention at the start of the piece, and post that, keeps you engaged in a way only a few musicians can. It defines a mood and then plunges deeper, in the same scale. There are no chord changes, or solos at scintillating speeds, no. What you have is crafty work on a singular scale. It becomes tough to keep the listener engaged, when you keep the scale constant throughout a nine or ten minute piece, but Sen has mastered the art so well by adding delightful fillers in between each of his tracks, that in spite of the fact that his music has always bypassed the constraints of genre and aimed at connecting with people on a more emotional level, a certain level of ethereality and spirituality is retained in every note that he plays. The album is a mark of Susmit Sen’s enormous achievement, not just as a guitarist, but as a fully fledged musician.
Bottom Line
It’s a champion musician’s work, and demand’s your fullest attention not, this time, to INDIAN OCEAN’s leading guitarist, but to a highly skilled solo artist, a man at peace with his guitar.
