Amogh Symphony - Biography
Logo
Biography
Amogh Symphony originally started as a solo studio project by Indian musician/producer Vishal J. Singh in 2004. "My interest in "recording" started in about 1996 (I was studying in 5th standard) with a Philips double cassette player/recorder with karaoke input, a Rs.300 Philips Microphone and a Zoom 1010 guitar effects unit. I used to record me playing drums on one blank cassette, acoustic guitar on another (with the first casette playing) using the Zoom 1010 as a reverb/delay/compression/flanger/EQ medium. That was between 1996 to 2000. I had a Hobner Jumbo Acoustic guitar (which I still have) to which I attached a cheap Kolkata-made electric guitar pickup with a Science practical notebook cover as pickup holder. The hollow body of that acoustic guitar was filled by my school uniform to avoid feedback. I composed my very first song in 1998 and I mixed and balanced everything from one cassette tape to another in that Philips recorder. Believe me, that was a nightmare. But I was really interested in making music and wanted to study more. Hence, Dad sent me to Mumbai to study sound engineering at the Digital Academy, Mumbai." - Vishal stated in an interview with NH7 India.
Their first full length album "Abolishing the Obsolete System" was released in 2009. In this album, Vishal played all the instruments himself and recorded himself. Around 200 physical copies were printed which were sold in 2 months on orders via online. "I wasn't very sure how many people would like to buy this record and because I was running out of cash, I printed 200 CD's myself, with a calculation that covers up my CD manufacture expenses. Test was successful." - Vishal stated.
The second studio album "The Quantum Hack Code" was released in 2010 with excellently talented and versatile American Drummer / Engineer Jim Richman from Virginia, United States of America who left the band in 2017 and handed over Drum Duties to Vishal J.Singh for their upcoming fourth album. Jim's last record was Amogh Symphony's third studio album "Vectorscan"(2014).
They have recently finished working on their third much-anticipated studio album with introducing the third Multi-Instrumentalist and Producer extraordinaire Andrey Sazonov from Russia. In Andrey Sazonov's words - "I grew up listening everything from King Crimson to Death, from Led Zeppelin to Blind Guardian, from Children of Bodom to Gackt. I enjoyed all of it. Being a kid I was taught to play a chromatic accordion, but ended up dealing with keyboards and guitars. Regular people like myself love unusual things. Never intended to write music, but ended up becoming a music producer and game OST composer.I tend to find something interesting in just about each and every genre and style the world can offer. Lots of interesting stuff (music, art, culture, languages) out there. I ended up combining the parts I like in my music. Around 2008 I started Dawn Sanctum project which combined synthpop with all kinds of heavy metal and electronica. The project released several game soundtracks apart from albums and EPs.
Soon enough I got an invitation to become a member of Abstract Deviation which I gladly accepted. I got acquainted with many amazing musicians and gradually participated in the shred project called Robots Pulling Levers with Their Shredding Majesties Mark Hawkins and Vishal J. Singh. The RPL experience was super refreshing for me so I naturally craved for more projects in the same vein. After seeing 'what I did there' with the RPL music Vishal approached me with an offer of becoming a member of Amogh Symphony. Funny enough, I thought he was a pretty unreachable guy when I first heard his music (and I loved Amogh music!). Being wrong has never felt any pleasant than the moment he spoke to me. So that's how I became the part of Amazing Soulcrushers 3 (AS3). (laughs). Just kidding.
I see myself 99% as the composer/arranger and 1% as a performer. Sometimes it's really challenging to get the technical capacity needed to pull some licks and tricks. Yet I'm trying to write humane music with maybe some little imperfections which make music tasty. That's how I see it. I tend to learn from each culture I encounter, especially Asian culture. On the popular culture side, I am a fan of history/myth/sci-fi/fantasy books (though I would still prefer dictionaries and reference books), anime (especially stuff that came out before 2005), Japanese RPGs, fighting games (Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, Tekken and the related) manga/manhua/manhwa, recent Bollywood movies and many more. I guess my motto would be 'We're here to learn'. Learning is life for me. Not even a single day without learning something new."
In 2015, Derick Savio Gomes aka "/Err" from Lisbon, Portugal, an electronic avant-pop artist/singer/producer/engineer, who is known for his very unique skill of using random field recordings to replace sound samples in MIDI and wav for experimental Low-Fi electronic music, joined as 4th new addition to Amogh Symphony line-up. Vishal met Derick during making of Soundtracks of Anurag Kashyap's movie "Gangs of Wasseypur Pt.1 and pt.2". Common good friend(also Music Director of Gangs of Wasseypur OST) Sneha Khanwalkar connected them under one roof. Derick is also the main mind behind MTV Sound Trippin' hosted by Sneha. Derick is into psychedlic artworks and paintings. He compose and produce music for ads/jingles and films/animations. Popularly known for his collaboration work with music composer Ram Sampath in OST of the film "Let's talk".
Fountainhead is the alter-ego of guitar player / composer / producer Tom Geldschläger. Currently operating from his studio in Berlin, Germany, "the Steve Vai of the new millenium" has appeared on dozens of records as a guitar player, producer & mixing-engineer. He recorded and toured with artists like Ray Riendeau, Marco Minnemann, Jimmy Pitts, Xell, Hannes Grossmann, Vishal Singh, Christian Münzner and Nader Sadek, has been featured in various music-magazines around the globe (most recently "Guitar Plus" and "Guitar World"), was the lead-guitarist for internationally-acclaimed technical death-metal band Obscura´s "Akroasis" album (to which he also contributed the 15-minute epic "Weltseele") and is a member of eclectic instrumental prog-fusion quartet "Pitts/Minnemann Project". In both bands he used fretless guitars predominantly, making him the figurehead of this otherwise rarely used breed of guitar to a new generation of guitar and metal fans ? a "modern day guitar legend" indeed.
He is currently endorsed by Steinberg Software, Loxx Products, Engl Amplification, Soultool Guitars and GoodTone Pickups, from which "Fountainhead signature" guitar models and pick-ups are available.
His solo releases "Fear Is The Enemy" and "Reverse Engineering" (feat. legendary players such as Derek Roddy, Ray Riendeau and more?) received rave reviews and secured him a dedicated following in just a few short years.
"I´m thrilled to be joining "Amogh Symphony" on their upcoming new album and onwards. In my humble opinion, they are one of the most unique, inspiring and flat-out fun bands in the world and I´ve been a total fan ever since I was first introduced to Vishal´s work and thus AS by the getting to work with the man himself on one of Jimmy Pitts´s albums (whom I also work with in the Pitts/Minnemann Project). Since then, many collaborations between Vishal and me and subsequently Andrey ensued. Having had already contributed a guitar solo to one of the new songs, I didn´t have to think twice when Vishal asked me to join him, Andrey and Derick on all of the new material, which is shaping up to be absolutely amazing and I can´t wait for all of you to hear what we´re cooking up! I´m always trying to put myself in musical situations where I feel challenged and appreciated in equal measures and, most of all, where I have the opportunity to learn from people who are masters at their craft and I feel that joining Amogh Symphony provides that in spades. Love & Light, Tom." - Tom Geldschlager
From Tech Death to Prog Metal, from Prog metal to Electronic Prog metal, from Electronic Prog metal to Avant-Jazz metal and from Avant-Jazz metal to Experimental World Fusion. The Journey continues??
Source: http://amoghsymphony.org/biography.
Their first full length album "Abolishing the Obsolete System" was released in 2009. In this album, Vishal played all the instruments himself and recorded himself. Around 200 physical copies were printed which were sold in 2 months on orders via online. "I wasn't very sure how many people would like to buy this record and because I was running out of cash, I printed 200 CD's myself, with a calculation that covers up my CD manufacture expenses. Test was successful." - Vishal stated.
The second studio album "The Quantum Hack Code" was released in 2010 with excellently talented and versatile American Drummer / Engineer Jim Richman from Virginia, United States of America who left the band in 2017 and handed over Drum Duties to Vishal J.Singh for their upcoming fourth album. Jim's last record was Amogh Symphony's third studio album "Vectorscan"(2014).
They have recently finished working on their third much-anticipated studio album with introducing the third Multi-Instrumentalist and Producer extraordinaire Andrey Sazonov from Russia. In Andrey Sazonov's words - "I grew up listening everything from King Crimson to Death, from Led Zeppelin to Blind Guardian, from Children of Bodom to Gackt. I enjoyed all of it. Being a kid I was taught to play a chromatic accordion, but ended up dealing with keyboards and guitars. Regular people like myself love unusual things. Never intended to write music, but ended up becoming a music producer and game OST composer.I tend to find something interesting in just about each and every genre and style the world can offer. Lots of interesting stuff (music, art, culture, languages) out there. I ended up combining the parts I like in my music. Around 2008 I started Dawn Sanctum project which combined synthpop with all kinds of heavy metal and electronica. The project released several game soundtracks apart from albums and EPs.
Soon enough I got an invitation to become a member of Abstract Deviation which I gladly accepted. I got acquainted with many amazing musicians and gradually participated in the shred project called Robots Pulling Levers with Their Shredding Majesties Mark Hawkins and Vishal J. Singh. The RPL experience was super refreshing for me so I naturally craved for more projects in the same vein. After seeing 'what I did there' with the RPL music Vishal approached me with an offer of becoming a member of Amogh Symphony. Funny enough, I thought he was a pretty unreachable guy when I first heard his music (and I loved Amogh music!). Being wrong has never felt any pleasant than the moment he spoke to me. So that's how I became the part of Amazing Soulcrushers 3 (AS3). (laughs). Just kidding.
I see myself 99% as the composer/arranger and 1% as a performer. Sometimes it's really challenging to get the technical capacity needed to pull some licks and tricks. Yet I'm trying to write humane music with maybe some little imperfections which make music tasty. That's how I see it. I tend to learn from each culture I encounter, especially Asian culture. On the popular culture side, I am a fan of history/myth/sci-fi/fantasy books (though I would still prefer dictionaries and reference books), anime (especially stuff that came out before 2005), Japanese RPGs, fighting games (Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, Tekken and the related) manga/manhua/manhwa, recent Bollywood movies and many more. I guess my motto would be 'We're here to learn'. Learning is life for me. Not even a single day without learning something new."
In 2015, Derick Savio Gomes aka "/Err" from Lisbon, Portugal, an electronic avant-pop artist/singer/producer/engineer, who is known for his very unique skill of using random field recordings to replace sound samples in MIDI and wav for experimental Low-Fi electronic music, joined as 4th new addition to Amogh Symphony line-up. Vishal met Derick during making of Soundtracks of Anurag Kashyap's movie "Gangs of Wasseypur Pt.1 and pt.2". Common good friend(also Music Director of Gangs of Wasseypur OST) Sneha Khanwalkar connected them under one roof. Derick is also the main mind behind MTV Sound Trippin' hosted by Sneha. Derick is into psychedlic artworks and paintings. He compose and produce music for ads/jingles and films/animations. Popularly known for his collaboration work with music composer Ram Sampath in OST of the film "Let's talk".
Fountainhead is the alter-ego of guitar player / composer / producer Tom Geldschläger. Currently operating from his studio in Berlin, Germany, "the Steve Vai of the new millenium" has appeared on dozens of records as a guitar player, producer & mixing-engineer. He recorded and toured with artists like Ray Riendeau, Marco Minnemann, Jimmy Pitts, Xell, Hannes Grossmann, Vishal Singh, Christian Münzner and Nader Sadek, has been featured in various music-magazines around the globe (most recently "Guitar Plus" and "Guitar World"), was the lead-guitarist for internationally-acclaimed technical death-metal band Obscura´s "Akroasis" album (to which he also contributed the 15-minute epic "Weltseele") and is a member of eclectic instrumental prog-fusion quartet "Pitts/Minnemann Project". In both bands he used fretless guitars predominantly, making him the figurehead of this otherwise rarely used breed of guitar to a new generation of guitar and metal fans ? a "modern day guitar legend" indeed.
He is currently endorsed by Steinberg Software, Loxx Products, Engl Amplification, Soultool Guitars and GoodTone Pickups, from which "Fountainhead signature" guitar models and pick-ups are available.
His solo releases "Fear Is The Enemy" and "Reverse Engineering" (feat. legendary players such as Derek Roddy, Ray Riendeau and more?) received rave reviews and secured him a dedicated following in just a few short years.
"I´m thrilled to be joining "Amogh Symphony" on their upcoming new album and onwards. In my humble opinion, they are one of the most unique, inspiring and flat-out fun bands in the world and I´ve been a total fan ever since I was first introduced to Vishal´s work and thus AS by the getting to work with the man himself on one of Jimmy Pitts´s albums (whom I also work with in the Pitts/Minnemann Project). Since then, many collaborations between Vishal and me and subsequently Andrey ensued. Having had already contributed a guitar solo to one of the new songs, I didn´t have to think twice when Vishal asked me to join him, Andrey and Derick on all of the new material, which is shaping up to be absolutely amazing and I can´t wait for all of you to hear what we´re cooking up! I´m always trying to put myself in musical situations where I feel challenged and appreciated in equal measures and, most of all, where I have the opportunity to learn from people who are masters at their craft and I feel that joining Amogh Symphony provides that in spades. Love & Light, Tom." - Tom Geldschlager
From Tech Death to Prog Metal, from Prog metal to Electronic Prog metal, from Electronic Prog metal to Avant-Jazz metal and from Avant-Jazz metal to Experimental World Fusion. The Journey continues??
Source: http://amoghsymphony.org/biography.