Music composer Soumyarya Mallick and animation filmmaker Deepayan Purkait have already painted narratives for us with their first release, ‘Moonflower’ from the animated musical series ‘Something To Hold On To’. The expressive artists are back with their new release called ‘In Her Time’, the second chapter of the series. Featuring music composed with incredible vision while keeping emotions central – this one is special. Harmonizing the song is an animated story, which promises to hit harder than a Pixar short film. Let me tell you what the project is about.
Talking about the collaboration
This is a collaborative effort all in all. What is something you have learnt composing with
other musicians about your music and what it teaches you for the project?
Soumyarya– One of the most important lessons I’ve learnt through collaboration is that a song can be arranged in countless ways, but the aim is to form that one version that reveals its true soul. It’s never about what we can play, it’s about what the song needs. That demands clarity from me as a composer, both in understanding the emotional shifts within the music and in communicating that vision during sessions.
Choosing the right collaborators is crucial. I’m not looking for a “jazz drummer” or a “funk “bassist”. In fact, part of my job is to break those genre identities in the room. At the same time, the wider a musician’s vocabulary and influences, the better, because it expands the range of ideas they can access. What matters most is their ability to step beyond genres and serve the composition honestly. In the course of the entire project thus far, I’ve been fortunate to work with musicians like Sounak Dutta, Sumit Dey, Arjun Kumar Roy, Kankana Singh, and Daipayan Dutta Gupta, who bring both versatility and creativity to the sessions.
I’ve also learnt the importance of disciplined listening during jam sessions and the fact that not every attractive idea truly belongs to the composition. And finally, capturing the right sonic texture at the recording stage is vital. When the source sound is recorded with the final mix in mind, the result feels far more organic. Recording engineers Tapasi Bhattacharya and Udit Saptarshi have been brilliant on this front.
A composition that distorts time
Art that transcends between mediums is always interesting to perceive. Soumyarya Mallick opens the song with bright, dissonant notes with a percussive rumble. Rather than associate with a tempo, you’re disassociated from time while listening to this piece. Strings come in to carry another layer of unspoken narration. The lead that eventually comes into the frame has its own intrinsic tempo, paired with the beautiful and gentle tone of the glockenspiel and celesta. Rather than add as a harmony to the guitar, the notes move as free spirits, making their own observations. Soumyarya Mallick ensures the song is allowed to breathe properly, adding that element of depth and distance into the tune organically. When the drums come in, they recede into the background more like the spine of the book. As it ends, it’s like staring at the horizon as the sun sets and the breeze tousles your hair.
Emotive layers that have been explored
Feelings are what have been guiding rails through your music composition. Is it difficult to hone into this-especially when you have to present the same through melodies?
During my initial days when I was creating songs, say during 2011 – 2017, this seemed difficult because feelings can be messy and the mind can lack clarity. But with time, these feelings which once seemed more like a haze began to leave a distinct mark. And another thing that happened with time is I stretched my own musicality by studying various kinds of music, and composition/songwriting styles. Hence by the time 2020 arrived, I was being able to translate the distinct mark of the emotional residues into musical compositions.
I try to address the differences that exist and acknowledge them. Like, say, melancholy, grief and anger might be in the same minor chord spectrum, but they can be represented by different extensions of the minor chord that give each a distinct flavour. When I compose music, I keep these feelings only as a strong reference that keeps me grounded so that I don’t go astray while composing.
Although I express emotions through music, when I compose I am not emotional. During that time I look at things like this – emotions, chords, and melodies are all raw materials for me to build something. I don’t get too attached to any part or section of the song. This neutral stance helps me to listen to the drafts and make decisions like, “This particular section is sounding like a drag if repeated twice; let’s keep it only once… that part is not being established properly; let’s repeat it a couple more times,” etc. Through all of these I try to ensure one thing – whether the song is in one flow from start to end, and if any section is sounding overwhelming or dragged out and is disturbing the flow, I attend to those areas and sort them out.
Visualising it as a stage
You talk about music being like a theater stage, a beautiful concept and visual. Are there some cues you feed off of from the others on stage with you?
For me it’s more like a sonic theatre stage than a visual one. During the arrangement phase, I think of different instruments as different characters on a stage, each with its own statement and role to play instead of serving as accompaniments. Each instrument has its own movement that is melodically and rhythmically different from the other. And for the composition to flow nicely, it’s important that while the instruments have their own statements and character, they should respect one another’s space. Otherwise the music can feel overcrowded if every instrument is going “look at me!” So yes, after I compose lines for one instrument, I listen to the sonic cues it leaves so that the next instrument can respect that while having its own unique identity. Like, say, in ‘In Her Time’, while working with drummer Sounak Dutta, I told him that my guitar for most of the song is already in a shuffle rhythm, and hence for the drums we explored ideas that are not in shuffle. Again, in the outro section, where the guitar is not in shuffle, you can hear a variant of shuffle on the drums. Hence, what comes up in the process is a drum arrangement that contributes a unique statement to the music.
Choice of instruments and progressions
The feeling of childhood tenderness has been captured very well with the mallet instruments, which by their resonance create a lot of depth. Do you choose instruments keeping these things in mind?
In the sound of mallet instruments like glockenspiel and celesta, there is an element that evokes the delicate moments we associate with early childhood. Hence, it’s a very appropriate addition to In Her Time. Although technically speaking any song can be arranged on any instrument, still, choice of instruments does matter. If used right and arranged properly, the sound of a particular instrument can really elevate the composition and contribute a unique texture to it. Take for example the cello ensemble sound in ‘In Her Time’. I used that sound to bring a feeling of vastness and ‘grand architecture’ to the music. The next chapter of the series, the title chapter, Something To Hold On To, explores zones that are of a very dark nature. Hence, over there I have used the same cello ensemble but in sul ponticello mode, which creates a harrowing screech, and it truly aligns with that particular composition.
The film and visual direction
Using hand-drawn animations on a digital medium, Deepayan Purkait has harnessed the soundtrack-like ability of this composition for a beautiful feature. It follows the story of Maya in a distant, cold country as she reminisces about her past in Kolkata. From the warm tone of the visuals to the stark break you see in the cold setting, it’s visual framing and an emotional thread many would associate with.
Keeping that human touch alive through the visual art is something Deepayan has done exceedingly well. In a time and age where you see AI art saturate the eyes, this becomes a welcome break from someone who truly experiences the music for the muse it is. The passage of visuals eventually becomes tied to the story so deeply that you would never imagine anything else taking its place.
Now from Deepayan Purkait, the storyteller:
Weaving the story through music
In developing the storyboard for In Her Time, did you go through iterations to get the richest, most descriptive version of the story? Tell us about this process.
The storyboard is a crucial part, and I am one of those people who believes that a good storyboard is a good film. Once a storyboard is completed, even before the film starts to get developed, we can see the entire film in a graphic narrative. You may think of it like reading a comic book or a graphic novel, but it is a bit different and contains information pertaining to scene, shot, action, dialogue, time, etc…. technical information crucial to filmmaking. In our case, the storyboard served as the film script.
The entire process of storyboarding goes through a lot of iterations, as it must…because it serves as a base for the entire film and how the story is crafted and told, how scenes are composed, how the characters act, how actions are broken down…everything. Everything began from the character design and storyboard stages, where not just the story but also the characters and the world they all came into being and were realised.
The storyboard is also where the world designing begins, and in later stages the storyboard panels are cleaned up and background layouts are created. I sent a chunk of the background layouts and sketches to Devleena Chakraborty, and she developed the background paintings of the cold country, whereas I developed the ones of Maya’s hometown, Kolkata, as shown in Maya’s reminiscence. This was a directorial choice and I think it went well and we have taken the same strategy in the following chapter as well, chapter 3, ‘Something To Hold On To’.
A good storyboard also helps to direct a work better. And it is deeply rooted in the process of storytelling. To me, it is not just about the story but also about how the story is told.
Depicting emotions as extended cinema
The “distance” is a concept that several experience, even when surrounded by people. How did you feel personally trying to depict these for the film?
Even when surrounded by people, one might feel loneliness. Personally I feel it is not about being known or surrounded by people, but about who is around you and… how close are they to you? In our work, Maya, the lead protagonist, is one such person. She feels this blankness inside her, estranged from her loved ones… and the cold white snow as if it symbolises her state of mind. There exists a vast emptiness inside her. She was born and brought up in a home with so many colours; while growing up she was always surrounded by her parents and grandparents, and she was always their little girl…she grew up like that, and eventually she left the country and went abroad in pursuit of work, but as time went on, the colours faded and desaturated bit by bit…she started feeling this blank inside her.
‘In Her Time’ explores alienation, separation, longing, memories, and mental health…in today’s world where so many people are moving away to other countries far far away from their homes looking for opportunity and work and a better living… I wanted to create and tell this story about such a person who left home and moved to a different country and about the people who stayed behind.
Challenges in drawing parallels of symbolism
When you swap between the people who have been left behind and the protagonist, do you feel challenges in depicting both their worlds differently visually?
Yes, definitely. It was quite challenging….and the upcoming chapter, ‘Something To Hold On To’ is even more challenging, which is currently in production. ‘In Her Time’ is set in not just two different countries but also different time zones…one is the present and another is a distant past that shows us the childhood of ‘Maya’, the lead protagonist, who at present resides in a distant country, where it is cold now…and where she once traveled all alone to live and work.
The cold is symbolic to the cold inside her as well. The balcony is her safe space where she sits down sometimes to enjoy some coffee and gaze at the vast white terrain clad in snow outside her apartment. And one such day as she is sitting down enjoying her coffee, the coffee cup breaks by mistake and whilst cleaning up she chances upon a small photo diary that was lying there somewhere for who knows how long beneath the small sofa in her balcony. And as she flips though the pages, moments and memories come to life and take her on a journey back through time in a roller coaster ride of memories.
And then for the first time we see the people who stayed behind….as we travel back in time to her childhood in her family home…we see her parents and grandparents and certain moments and memories that were captured in her small photo dairy. Looking at all those photos Maya smiles like a child once again. Through those photos we get to see things she once loved so much, like playing in her terrace surrounded by beautiful and colorful flowering plants, swaying on her Grandfather’s armchair, having story books read out to her, learning to play the keyboard with her mother, and while portraying all these there is only one constant and that is Maya, surrounded by her loved ones and she was always their world.
This ‘swap’ between the protagonist and the people who stayed behind is further explored in the upcoming chapter, ‘Something To Hold On To’, and I really do not wish to give any spoiler so I would encourage everyone to experience the upcoming chapter where the story continues.
Further projects from the duo
Tell us about the upcoming chapter ‘Something to Hold On To’. What have you learnt storytelling this that you’d want to talk about?
While I really do not wish to give out any spoilers I would say a few things. STHOT continues from where ‘In Her Time’ ends. It begins in Maya’s balcony in the distant cold country. This chapter is by far one of the most challenging works that I have written and storyboarded. And this chapter just like the music is much more hard hitting, and drenched in sorrow… and pain.
Soumyarya Mallick makes a song that is a listener’s delight and a dreamer’s escape, rolled into one. And Deepayan Purkait creates a short animated film telling a story that is so deeply rooted in reality, yet one that transcends and transforms reality. A collaboration where music and film beautifully harmonize with one another. ‘In Her Time’ is a wonderful revelation of the mind captured through a unique perspective – honest and inspiring.
Follow Soumyarya and Deepayan on their Instagram to follow their journey!
The project has its own Instagram, which you can click on and follow!
Listen to the music and watch the short film here:
Check out our playlists here!
Check out our YouTube channel for music reviews, playlists, podcasts, and more!
