Keshavara

"Moondrām Sevi" Tour

KESHAVARA prefer to find their bearings in the haze rather than on a map: somewhere between Cologne and South India, between Kraut pop, psychedelic soundtracks, and an adventurous patois of English, German, Tamil, and gibberish. On “Moondrām Sevi,” the fourth album by the band led by German-Indian musician Keshav Purushotham—featuring Niklas Schneider, Benedikt Filleböck, and Christopher Martin—this in-between realm opens up even further. The title, which means “third ear” in Tamil, leads to a place where memory, imagination, and a few misinterpreted movie scenes all get mixed up.
The first single is set to be released in July. It’s inspired by the Kollywood films that Keshav watched as a child in India alongside his cousin Sahana Naresh. On the track, Sahana sings in Tamil about a fictional character from one of these garishly glittering parallel universes. To accompany this, string machines, 12-string guitars, and the grooves of a rhythm section—one that would have felt right at home in the recording studios of mid-’70s funky Beirut—are combined by eye and shaken up wildly. The result is a series of cocktails crowned with a surrealist sugar rim, shimmering and shimmering like a mirage in the desert.
After “III” took the Cologne-based band to European festival stages, on their first extensive European tour, alongside Khruangbin and Grandbrothers, and most recently all the way to Scandinavia, they’ll be touring Europe again in October with “Moondram Sevi.” On stage, this won’t be a concert evening in the conventional sense, but rather a colorful journey through their own pop kaleidoscope: magnificent costumes, daring headwear, sugar-sweet, meandering melodies, hall-echo-soaked corridors, and four musicians who, with the storytelling flair of shrewd sound alchemists, steer their songs into ever-new side paths.
“Moondram Sevi” will be released in October. That same month, KESHAVARA will embark on a European tour to promote the new album.