Live: KESHAVARA

In the organizer's words:

KESHAVARA evolved from a solo project by the German-Indian musician Keshav Purushotham. The initial spark was an artist residency organized by the Goethe Institute, which took him to his second home in South India in 2013. In search of his roots, the first tracks of the debut album "Keshavara" were created in Chennai, Pondicherry and Auroville and released in 2016 on the label Papercup Records, which he runs together with his partner Steddy.

The great response to the album led to the formation of the ensemble KESHAVARA in 2017 with the core line-up Keshav Purushotham (vocals, guitar), Niklas Schneider (drums, percussion), Benedikt Filleböck (keyboards), Christopher Martin (bass). In 2020, Keshavara are awarded the prestigious popNRW prize in the "Outstanding Artist" category and bring the "Cabinet of Fantasy" to the stage for the first time, where they weave music, acting and choreography into a vaudeville-inspired, avant-garde spectacle. Parallel to the cinematic realization of this "peep show through the pop kaleidoscope" (Deutschlandfunk), Keshav is working with Niklas Schneider on the album of the same name, which will be released in 2021.

Numerous acclaimed performances followed, during which Keshav, Niklas, Benedikt and Christopher grew closer and closer together. While KESHAVARA's debut was still a solo project and the follow-up "Kabinett der Phantasie" was essentially a duo project, the third album, simply titled "III", is a real band album. On it, the cunning sound alchemists blend kraut-pop, dub-not-dub excursions and sugar-sweet meandering melodies trained on library compositions and psychedelic soundtracks with the grooves of a rhythm section that would have felt right at home in the recording studios of funky Beirut in the mid-seventies. The result is cocktails topped with a surrealistic sugar rim with the effect of hallucinogenic Jell-O. Music that shimmers and flickers like a mirage in the desert