The return of Kaaktaal: Finding their 'peace', piece by piece
More than a year after walking away because the music had stopped giving them peace, Kaaktaal returns not only with a comeback show, but a world rebuilt on stage
The lights came up on a single figure behind bars. Aia Lemonsky sang alone from inside a stark, jail-like setup, his voice the only thing filling the room. Then, slowly, the walls fell away.
On the night of 4 September, Kaaktaal's long-awaited return didn't so much begin as it unfolded. As the music built, the stage bloomed into a colourful world, a house rising into view with shuttered windows, potted plants, and clothes strung along an upper balcony where a flautist played.
Beside Aia, Nazm Anwr drew the scene to life in real time, his visuals shifting with every turn of the melody. By the time the lights had fully changed, it no longer felt like a concert. It felt like a small world had been built in front of everyone watching.
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That was the point. More than a year after Kaaktaal announced it was walking away because it was "losing its peace," the band returned on Friday with something far stranger and more tender than a comeback show.
Staged by Let's Vibe, "Chena Britter Aborte" arrived as three things at once an exhibition, an acoustic session, and an evening concert, each one orbiting the band's music and the visual universe around it.
And through all of it, Kaaktaal seemed less interested in recreating what it once was than in rediscovering what had made the music feel right to begin with.
When the band stepped away in May last year, after nearly four years together, it said the journey had to stop because it had lost the peace that was its whole reason for being. For Aia, though, leaving didn't deliver the calm he'd been chasing.
"I tried doing jobs," he said, "but that did not give me the peace I looked for."
What he missed was the crowd. "I really, really missed singing to people," he said. "When you're saying out your words, your feelings, and hundreds and thousands of people are singing along with you… no other job or skill gives you that pleasure." On Friday night, that feeling was written all over the room.
The afternoon began with an exhibition built around Kaaktaal's visual world, with illustrations, merchandise and artworks displayed across the space alongside carrying the band's distinct artwork. The acoustic session followed, with the music performed against a backdrop of artwork and a ceiling filled with suspended birds, turning the venue into something closer to an installation than a conventional concert space.
By evening, that visual language had expanded onto the main stage.
The setup recreated the feel of a neighbourhood, complete with building facades,tea stall, balconies, windows, plants and even hanging clothes. It was theatrical without feeling disconnected from the music.
Then came the live calligraphy ,Nazm working on his artwork as Asif sang while flute and harmonica added their own textures to the performance and Samit Manzoor's piano occasionally took over the room.
Alongside songs familiar to their listeners, the band performed new songs including "Omil", "Ghum Ashar Age", "Jong Dhora Gaan" and "Amader Choto Nodi".
For Nazm, the band's return was not the result of a fixed roadmap. The desire to make music had simply returned. He said we never had any plan,we always do what we feel like doing. We did not feel like it earlier we stopped,and now we feel like doing it again so we are back.
For the fans though, this comeback meant a lot more. Many had been waiting for years to see them together again, and finally being in the same room with Kaaktaal felt almost unreal. For some, it was like getting a small piece of something they had missed for a long time back.
When asked about the future plans of the band Aia said,
''We are working on our new songs, a lot of new songs actually. We have two albums in the pipeline. We started recording one, and we'll gradually go ahead with the sounds. And we're going to do more shows, definitely.''
Yet Nazm remains characteristically open-ended about what comes after this.
Perhaps that is what makes Kaaktaal's return feel so fitting. The band that once walked away because the music was no longer giving them peace has returned only when the desire to make it came back.
