Siddharth Kota is a guitarist who has just marked his debut with FLOW, a 5-minute showcase on his skills with the six-stringer accompanied with a few more instrumentalists. 

True to its name, FLOW flows out naturally with its ambient electric guitar riffs and mellow drums (thanks to Swojas Bilurkar). Aditya Kamble and Brian Fernandes also add to the mix with their work on the bass and the keys respectively. 

Coming back to Kota, the guitarist does show great potential with his ambient production and in fact, his skills can also be used for calming music genres like dreampop or ambient pop. 

Thematically, the singer reveals that the song is about the creative block that can plague any artist’s mind at any point of time. But when the artist achieves the flow of ideas, nothing can stop them then. The artist loses all sense of time and the creative forces take over. 

The 5-minute duration can test some listeners’ patience but that again depends on the demographic that the song aims at. Maybe, in his future singles, he can also throw in a vocalist or two just to appeal to some more conventional audiences. This is a approach that has worked with instrumentalists like Chirag Todi and Nalin Vinayak. Hence, a mix of instrumental-only and vocal-driven tracks. 

FLOW does try to set itself apart and there’s genuine effort from the instrumental ensemble but maybe some more variations in the production can help in making the track a little less straightforward and set Kota apart from other guitar-driven producers in the scene right now. 

In the end, FLOW is an increasingly vibey track with some potential that can be unleashed further with the newcomer’s future discography. 

Verdict: Soulful and vibey guitaring accompanied by some fine backing instrumentation.