Champak's actual origin is a toy keyboard, two guitars, a pair of drumsticks and some questionable Wi-Fi, gathered around a dinner table in Goa while it poured outside. Shoumik Biswas, Aman Chawla, Lakshman Parsuram and Aditya Bhardwaj didn't set out to start anything. They just kept jamming until the jamming turned into an album, and the album turned into a decision they made over Zoom, months later, almost as an afterthought.
That looseness is all over their debut, A1, seven tracks that sound like a mixtape of 80s pop hooks and bedroom-studio mischief. Some tracks built quite literally from old voice notes off that original Goa recording. It's an album that lets a song called Until I Find Grace count itself in with 1, 2, 3, 4… like it's the most obvious thing in the world, which, in Champak's world, it is. Then there's Daarkaak, the track that hooked us first. It has Bengali lyrics stretched and syncopated into shapes so unfamiliar that listeners have asked if it's Korean. Funky, weird, and completely unbothered by convention, that's Champak in one sentence. Catch them live this month in Bangalore, Pune, Bombay, Delhi & Kolkata.
Rains, Tea & Music
Shoumik Biswas: It was only really after we recorded and finished all the songs on the first album that we decided to make it a band. I distinctly remember having a Zoom conversation with everyone about whether we are actually doing this band thing or just doing a drive-by album with all our individual names or whatever.
Aman Chawla: Honestly, I feel like it was inevitable. We’ve jammed with each other often enough to know the kind of music we could make, so it was really a matter of time we made it official. Very glad and grateful for the Goa rains, though. Who knows when Champak would have actually surfaced otherwise.
Lakshman Parsuram: I think it only really hit me a few months after that first dining table jam at Aditya’s place in Goa, when Shoumik brought in a demo of one of the ideas. That’s when I realised that we were actually going to make music together and it pretty much took off from there. The idea of being a band only really happened once we were close to finishing up the record. Right up till then, we were just having fun making the record with no intentions of what we wanted to do with it.
Aditya Bhardwaj: I remember having a call with Shoumik early on about whether we wanted to make a video or create some visuals for this amorphous thing the four of us were doing, which eventually led to the Zoom call where we committed to doing this. Chakras unlocked, tips touched, Champak birthed.
Why Champak?
All in unison: Because it rhymes with Deepak.
Completely Unexpected Lyricism
SB: Being a drummer, I think my brain always viewed the cadence of words in singing as another piece of the rhythmic puzzle. It’s actually interesting that you mention the words landing unexpectedly for a Bengali sentence. It’s because I’m so used to writing in English; I think of melodies like they would be sung in English. That means syllables fall differently than they would in more naturally Bengali writing. Once I put the Bengali writing to these melodies, I end up dividing it up in a manner that is very unnatural for usual Bangla written songs. To the point where a bunch of people have asked if the song is in Korean or Japanese. Which is an interesting discussion about language for another time.
AC: This is honestly why Shoumik is the band’s vocalist. They’ve got an idea of pockets where vocals can be, and with the lyrics being in Bengali as well, it adds a character to the song no other language could.
A1 Since Day1
SB: We’re definitely all excited to perform these songs live. Personally, I miss playing drums with people on stage. So I’m looking forward to that. Expect surprises. We will too.
AC: Definitely looking forward to bringing this album live to people. What can you expect from us? No clue. Come find out with us.
LP: We didn’t write the record with the idea of performing it live, so when we got together to do this, some of the songs changed almost entirely. I’m personally quite chuffed with the fact that we have a version of the record that exists for people to experience in person that is different from what they can listen to at home. We've also been writing new material, so I’m excited to workshop it on the road.
AB: Like Lakshman said, a lot of these tracks have changed for the stage and we are excited to share the evolved versions of the album with everyone. Plus, there is a pretty significant visual component to our performances. For a few of the cities, we are bringing in a friend who will be helping us with projection mapping and visuals using the existing visual world of Champak. Hopefully, this is the start to something that grows into a bigger/richer A/V experience.
This is an article from the October EZ. For more such stories, read the EZ here.
Words Hansika Lohani
Date 31.10.2026