Review Fix Exclusive: InRegalia’s Vijay Victor Fernandes Talks Goals And More

Review Fix chats with InRegalia’s Vijay Victor Fernandes, who discusses the band’s origins, goals, creative pro0cess and so much more.

About the Band: 

Based in the city of Mumbai in the western part of India, InRegalia is a band which plays Classic and Alternative Rock with elements of Indian classical music. 

The band was founded by guitarist Vijay Fernandes. They were later joined by vocalist Peter Abraham, drummer Warren Swaries, Keith Pereira on keys and Saurav Das on bass.  The band has been active on the Indian indie circuit playing at a number of venues in their home city and across the country.

InRegalia has released three singles and two EP’s thus far.  The band has received positive reviews and coverage in the press and blogs and their music has been aired on over 200 indie radio stations and podcasts worldwide.  

The band is currently working on a string of singles culminating with an EP all of which is slated to be released this year.

Their music is available on all the major digital retail outlets and streaming platforms.

Review Fix: How did the project start?

Vijay Victor Fernandes: I was looking for band mates when I came to Mumbai after my corporate stint.  After a lot of line-up changes, an online audition call was posted on Facebook looking for a front man sometime in late 2012 and then Pete came onboard.  We then had a fairly long hunt for our drummer, 14 auditions in fact before we landed upon Warren. We had quite a few players with us handling keyboard duties till sometime in 2015 when we were joined by Keith. Warren also plays in another alternative rock band and a few years later when our former bass player chose to move on, he (Warren) recommended we give his other band’s bass player a shot. Saurav came in to audition and this has been the InRegalia line-up for the past 3 years now.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Fernandes: I use a variety of different approaches.  I use the idea as a ‘seed’ and then work off of it.  The ideas could come to me from any situation or experience.  Some examples could be a guitar riff, a vocal melody idea, a percussive groove I’ve heard on a song and at times it could come to me when I’m in a totally non-related musical situation.  Basically, I just keep my senses open to anything I perceive as an idea.  I then write the lyrics to these ideas based on what I feel about the different situations or circumstances and the observations I’ve made about life in general.  At any given point of time, there’s at least a few ideas at the back of my head.  I don’t necessarily sit down to finish it immediately until I feel I have something to help complement the idea.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?

Fernandes: Songwriting is an evolutionary process to me.  I’ll keep trying to better myself in the song writing department.  But since you asked this question, I think the stand out song to me so far has got to be ‘S.E.V.A’, the latest release and the first instrumental I’ve written.  I’m not in the mould of a virtuoso guitar player so my instrumentals will be different than what most would expect.  But the song displayed our instrumental capabilities with a great flow to it with respect to the dynamics.  At least in my head, when I first wrote it, I didn’t expect to turn out that way.  All credit to Warren, our drummer who’s our go-to man for production and also Pete, Keith and Saurav too.

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2021?

Fernandes: Covid caught the world unawares and all parts of the world are now dealing with second and third waves. It’s safe to say that live gigging in our country is unlikely to start in 2021 at least not in a meaningful way. Hence our focus will be to flesh out existing and new music ideas, of course recording and releasing more songs.  We’re also looking at creating more video content for our social media channels.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Fernandes: Ever since the song writing bug bit me, I’ve always wanted to write songs based on what we experience here in Mumbai and in our country.  Of course, I don’t mind writing the ‘cliched’ ballad and stuff like that once in a while but it’s the struggles and life experiences that touch me the most.  I want our listeners to empathize and relate with them because these are real life struggles we all face or will face one way or the other.  And of course, there’s always songs in our repertoire that I hope will galvanize them too.  So, its not all doom and gloom of course.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Fernandes: We’re planning on releasing a string of singles leading up to the release of our third EP.  The release timing will be depend on how we come out of the pandemic but we’re currently working on it irrespective.