Aaryan Banthia Releases His Soulful New Single ‘TERE BIN’

By Noor Anand Chawla Soulful love songs transcend the boundaries of language and musical preferences, finding takers in even the most non-romantic of souls. Aaryan Banthia’s latest single, ‘Tere Bin’, is a great example of the kind of music with universal appeal. The Singer, Composer and Musician shares, “This song is about love that has been lost due to the unexpected death of a loved one.” The idea and the melody of this rock love ballad came to him when he was driving on a quiet night in Kolkata, which is his hometown. He then let his instinct take over, deciding to go with the flow and let the beauty and pain play out as it wanted to through this number. Music has been Aaryan Banthia’s passion ever since he can remember, but he claims that he had not planned to actively pursue it as a profession. “I had gone to the UK to study Sports Management and in my free time I started exploring and performing music in pubs. This brought me a lot of recognition and people started coming to watch me sing. It felt great and this boosted my confidence. Once I was back in Kolkata, I started a band with my friends called ‘The Bombay Gramophone Company’.” This group later disbanded owing to Banthia’s desire to expand his repertoire as an artist-composer, as well as to work with accomplished musicians and explore his musical potential to its fullest. Having grown up in a musical environment, he was familiar with iconic bands/artists from a very young age. His favourites, which also proved to be his biggest influence, included ‘Dire Straits’, ‘Eric Clapton’, ‘Jimmy Hendrix’, ‘Bon Jovi’, ‘Kenny Rogers’, ‘Bruce Springsteen’, ‘Pink Floyd’ and ‘Cliff Richards’. He claims this early music education in the classics, made it easy for him to enter the field of music and begin his professional journey a few years after finishing college. Since he first began, he has written, composed and sung six songs, the first of which was ‘Yaadein’, released by Zee Music Company which gathered over a million views in the first month of its release. After his second song, he began releasing all his songs on his own YouTube channel. These include ‘Hey Betty’, ‘Back in the Day’, ‘Paar’, and ‘Best Days of My Life’. The next offering is his latest one – the soft, romantic number ‘Tere Bin’, which released on August 26. “I would like to believe that I don’t stick to any one particular genre in my compositions. I have played with a lot of genres already such as country music, rock ballads etc., and I want to continue to look for my sound. My last single “Best Day of My Life” was a happy country song,” he says, speaking about his wide range of work. It took around two-three months to complete the audio and video production of ‘Tere Bin’. The music video stars Sauraseni Mitra, a renowned Bengali actress, and the rising Bengali star Aryan Roy in the lead roles as the couple in love. Banthia was very keen to hire professional actors for this music video because ‘you should just let the professionals do what they do best’. He explains, “When I saw Sauraseni and Aryan together, I felt they looked good together and suited my song and its vibe well. You can also see in the video that they had good chemistry and have done a splendid job of acting out my song’s emotions.” The shoot took place in Orissa at ‘The Belgadia Place’, and required a tremendous amount of work to put together, but Banthia says he is happy with the final result. When asked about his journey as an artist during the pandemic, he shares candidly, “I would like to believe that people in India have started to understand quality music more during this time. They’ve had a lot of time to themselves and have heard a lot of music and explored many artists during this time. Overall I’d say it’s a good time for Indian indie Music.” Basking in the success of his latest release, Banthia is currently working on a more mainstream pop song – a genre he has not yet played with. With both English and Hindi songs to his name, he is also hoping to sing in more languages in the future. He signs off with, “I’m just very happy with how my track and the music video has come together and would like all my fans to check it out. I want them to make it their own and relate to it at a more personal level. I will feel like a winner if that happens.”Aaryan Banthia’s song ‘Tere Bin’ is available for streaming on all platforms. \