Smoke is the collaborative sound of 2 Mumbai-based musicians Ashu & Dhruv. Dhruv trained in Indian Classical and the Ashu in Western Classical. The result is a rooted metropolitan sound far, far away from the comfort of the tried-and-tested. Their work runs the whole gamut of genres from Western Symphonic to Bebop, Indian classical to Dance, and Blues. Smoke is a Mumbai-based experimental outfit, and also works with commercials and feature film soundtracks in India and around the world. Ashutosh Phatak started his career with a college band called Orphean Revival and his musical education at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He did a dual degree of Economics and Western Classical Music Theory for which he composed a range of piano and violin pieces, and finally created an original full orchestral symphony as a final project. He has written, scripted, composed and produced a 20 song Rock Opera called “I” and is also now embarking on a live performance career with his new album “The Sigh of an Angel”. Somewhere down the way he also sold nebulizers. Dhruv Ghanekar began studying Indian classical music at the age of nine. His love with the guitar began while still in school and in a few years he founded Chakraview, a rock band. 1996 saw the end of Chakraview, and the beginning of his working relationship with Ashutosh, but Dhruv continued to study music, and learned under the great sarangi exponent Sultan Khan. In 1997, Dhruv’s desire for a more formal education in music, mainly jazz, led him to the Musicians Institute in California and the Berkley College of Music. Dhruv performs his unique brand of jazz/fusion regularly at concerts with his band ‘Usual Suspects’. Their first album ‘Smoke Signals’ is a twisted futuristic vision of traditional India in different languages.