MUMBAI: Delhi based rock band Parikrama’s band members recorded the theme song for a Marathi film, Akalpith. The film is directed by Prasad Achrekar, who approached the band since he had in mind a theme song with an aggressive feel to it. The track is called 'Har Ek Ko Benaqaab Kar’ and it composed by members Nitin Malik, Subir Malik and Sonam Sherpa.

"It is not a Parikrama project per se. The rest of the band was not involved. The director approached Subir, also the band manager, who went over the briefs and then told us about it. It took some changes and quite a bit of back and forth before the track was finalised. Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary," said Parikrama frontman Nitin Malik. The trio has composed only the theme song for the film.

When asked about the feel of the character Nitin gave vocals for, he replied, "I have one word for the track; introspective. The character is introspective and determined. The tone of the song is very synonymous with the politics played out in news channels every day." He further spoke about why they agreed to do the song, "It was definitely an interesting theme and we really enjoyed ourselves. Plus, it is the first time we are doing something like this. I have never sung in a Hindi film, forget Marathi film. I have never sung in Hindi in my life. Because it is right up our alley, we thought we could take it up and see where it goes," he added.

Recording a Hindi track cannot have been a cakewalk for singer who has been performing English music for 22 years, and Nitin could not agree more. "I had a tough time controlling my English accent while singing in Hindi. I am so used to singing in English for 22 years, I can speak Hindi just fine, but I was not able to keep the accent out of my Hindi vocals. (laughs) and I said to myself, "Bloody, you are Indian guy. You should be able to sing in Hindi properly, not the other way round!" All in all, I think we managed pretty okay," chuckled Nitin.

Having been an indie musician for the longest time, Nitin is open to experimentation, but with some boundaries. "Take up similar projects? Why not! One needs to keep on experimenting and going into areas which one has not been in before, while keeping your limits and boundaries in minds. For instance, regardless of the money situation, I would never compose music for singing and dancing around trees, those typical Bollywood songs. (laughs) There are enough people doing a great job with that and good luck to them, but that is their thing. I will stick to this niche genre of Rock music, thank you."

The band has been on the go for quite some time now. They had a concert in Siliguri on 29 January and will perform in Goa on 1 February. "We are touring like mad, basically. Fifteen days back we were in Russia playing in St. Petersburg; quite a maddening travel schedule. I broke my ankle three days ago while jumping on stage from a twenty foot high ledge. I was advised two weeks bed rest and I rested two days before flying to Siliguri. To put it simply, we have been to two different countries and seven different cities in the last 10 days," Nitin said.

The band is making quite a bit of new music but has not had the chance to take a breather, record tracks and put them together. "We are performing our new songs at every concert. There is a new song almost every month that we play for the first time. The best way to figure out if a song is working or not is to judge it by the crowd’s reaction."

One of India’s earliest rock bands, Parikrama has watched the rock scene evolve for 22 years now. But Parikrama is not planning a new album, since there is little sense in it. "We give out our music for free. You can find it on our Facebook page. We are yet to figure out what to do with our new songs; whether to give it out as free downloads or do something else. When we recorded 'But It Rained’ there were about five million official downloads from the website itself, and that is a great number for this country. It is about a hundred thousand times any rock album sold in this country. We have enough songs to record and release five albums by the end of the week," said Nitin.