Live music at the Unwind Center

Unwind Center (yes, it's the American spelling) is a place that opened up pretty recently in Bangalore. They are in Wilson Garden, right in front of the post-office. For more on the centre, see their website.

Two bands played yesterday: Old Jungle Saying from Bangalore and Psychomotor from Mumbai. Listening to two bands set you back by Rs. 100. Apart from the music, you got a wrist tag as your ticket.

The Unwind Center cafe, which is where the music is played, looks good. You have the cafe near the entrance, with chairs and tables and the stage is at the other end. The wooden flooring gives the place a polished look. The interesting part of the place is the billboards which are on the ceiling and have music-related information on them. The difficult part is that you have to crane your neck to read the information. Innovative, but difficult to read. There are rafters/benches, closer to the stage, where you can sit and enjoy the music.

Old Jungle Saying was up first. They started off with a song by Faith No More. Then they did an own composition, which I'm neutral about. The song that I did like was Maroon 5's Harder to Breathe. (If you haven't heard of Maroon 5, they might be worth a listen.)

Old Jungle Saying did a couple of more covers, two by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and one by Rage Against The Machine, and a couple of their own compositions, Third String, and Old Jungle Saying. The band is relatively new, only been together a month or two, but the band gels together quite well. The only complaint that I had was that their sound was not mixed well. They were too loud and the vocals could not be heard much, except on a couple of songs; a pity because the vocalist was good. Bit of trivia: The vocalist sings in another band called Synaps. Old Jungle Saying's music is funk-rockish.

The second band to play, after a fifteen minute break, was Psychomotor, from Mumbai. Psychomotor played only one own composition, the rest were all covers. They played Deep Purple's Black Night, Hush, Metallica's wherever I May Roam, one Megadeath song, and a couple of others, ending with Another Brick In the Wall. The song that I liked best was Sunshine of Your Love (Cream). Psychomotor's version had a nice hard-rock edge to it and for me it was the song that rocked the most.

Psychomotor's pretty much a metal band, though they flirt with hardish rock sometimes. Their sound was much better and you could actually hear the vocalist, who was pretty decent. The lead guitarist, who played what looked like an Ibanez, was really good and nailed all the riffs, while adding a different flavour here and there.

The next acts to play at the Unwind Center are Ministry of Blues and Neil Mukherji, on 26 November, at 7 pm.