Elephant Stone is Bringing Psychedelic Whiplash to Comet Ping Pong

Interview with Rishi Dhir of Elephant Stone

By: Molly Szymanski

Rishi Dhir has been in the music game for decades. Most recently, and for the last 15 years, he’s been the mind behind the project Elephant Stone, a psych-pop band out of Montreal. The band’s newest release, “Back Into The Dream” was released last month. According to Dhir, the album is a departure from their usual concept album style, and dedicated wholeheartedly to a positive vibe.

Before he got to play with the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, and Beck, though, he had to start in Montreal— with a sitar teacher who looked a little too much like Charles Manson in 1997. Growing up listening to Bollywood music and the Beatles, Dhir began incorporating sitar into rock music.

Over the course of 30 years, he has honed and developed his style— experimenting with new genres and working on different projects. Dhir finally landed on the modern Elephant Stone sound, one based on pure expression.

“I’m recording, mixing, and producing the albums in my home studio. It's much more of a whole homegrown project and especially with the last record, I spent a year on it just perfecting it. I do it for me, and I think the music benefits from that,” said Dhir.

Elephant Stone will be at Comet Ping Pong on March 27, not just playing songs from “Back Into The Dream,” but a whole sonic adventure chronicling their nearly two decades worth of discography. “We have so many records and so many different moods in our songs,” said Dhir. “[At our live shows] there’s rock and roll, it gets spiritual, there’s metal, it’s all over the place. It's all kinds of different music, but it sounds like us all the time.”