EXCISE DEPT, an inimitable audio-visual four-member collective, believes that deviating from the chase for “rainbows” of the music industry allows them to live within the freedom of their own pace and style of music production. As self-produced creatives from New Delhi and Mumbai, EXCISE DEPT forms their developing world through evocative experimental music, film, and interactive digital artwork.

Within their new album, SHOPNOBHUMI, they capture themes of the widely shared experience of intergenerational trauma from the 1947 partition of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and problematic ideas of nationhood that still exist. This new album feels like an instinctive way to generate their “collective artistic evolution” through capturing a consistent feeling of yearning, distance, and transportation.

EXCISE DEPT inspires all through self-reliance, experience, and focus on authenticity. All that matters to this group is being “bold and brazen” in a vast world that does not always inspire this thinking.