Celebrating conversations with the self: Aakash Rajan’s latest single ‘Come With Me/Yen Kooda Vaa’

Specialising in being a recording and a mix engineer, Aakash Rajan has been making his own music since he was 16 years old. Growing up and currently based in Chennai, Rajan has been practicing Carnatic vocals and Mridangam since he was about 6 years old. He is trained in the Grammy-nominated artiste Vinayakram’s Gurukulam. The 21-year-old artist took up studying music production and audio engineering formally as he turned 17.

After graduating from Pune, he started working with renowned playback singer and film composer Karthik. He has worked on the sitar maestro Purbayan Chatterjee’s album ‘Unbounded-Abaad’ featuring eminent artists like Shankar Mahadevan, Javed Ali, Ustaad Zakir Hussain, Micheal League, etc. Other than this, Rajan has also worked with some of Bollywood’s most accomplished artists like Sid Sriram, Benny Dayal, Jonita Gandhi, Bombay Jayashree, and many more. As an audio engineer and a musician, he believes that there is no ‘perfect sound,’ therefore he invariably aims to capture the best possible sound at the source and is known to mix with a minimalist approach.

A fusion between Hollywood-style vocals and guitars with a pure South Indian folk rhythm, ‘Come With Me/Yen Kooda Vaa,’ his latest single was released on the 28th of July. It captures a short sweet story about how a person pulled themselves back up through a conversation they had with the self. The song is a celebration of conversations that happens right before the person transforms into someone he/she has never been before, leaving behind a version the same never wants to be again. It was recorded at Offbeat Music Ventures in Chennai, which also happens to be the artist’s favourite studio.

Rajan hopes to collaborate with artists like Jazz Emu, Quratulain Balouch, Pradeep Kumar, and Lizzy McAlpine in the future. We are sure this young artist will soon make it possible.