Sunday October 8, 2006
The last time I wrote in this section was on June 09, 2006. Since then, a lot of you reading this section regularly asked if I had taken off to Himalayas for a long penance, or if i had renounced this world of music, or if I had become a mechanic in a hardware godown!
It is indeed not of my real self to keep silent. But this time I did and for a long time at that. No, laziness definitely was not the reason. Somebody told me to keep quiet if something nice is about to happen – keep quiet till it actually happens. It has happened to me many times when I have spoken about things when they just ‘seemed’ to happen but did not really happen….so this time when this miracle in my life was taking shape, I kept quiet. Real quiet.
If you have read my earlierfirst blog ‘What a Fantastic Beginning’, I had told you about a certain small solo gig (my guitar, my voice, my sky) at a hip place in Bandra, Mumbai called Zenzi. I had a decent crowd that night and it was a long time since I held a crowd being alone on stage…among the crowd were many known names and among them a particular group of 4 were listening to me very intently. Vishal-Shekhar the hip music director duo of Bluffmaster, Taxi-9211, Golmaal fame and many more, along with Vijay Nair and Bobby (Only Much Louder) stayed back after the concert to have a word with me. We sat at a table outside, away from the crowd and Vishal spoke to me in his usual no-nonsense tone. We spoke for a long time…it took even longer to digest where and what I was doing there and it took till this very day, as I write these words, to realise what a miracle was taking shape!
Vishal-Shekhar along with Vijay Nair and Bobby have started a record label called ‘Counter Culture Records’ which now has sent me the final draft of the recording deal to record and publish 9 of my best songs! Suddenly, my song ‘I am in Mumbai, waiting for a miracle’ doesnt seem to have any significance to me! Ha ha!
Since that fateful concert to this day, I have been literally underground working on those 9 songs. We have almost got there to that final stage of recording. A few finishing touches here and there and soon we get into the mixing mode. I have been having a fantastic recording experience at my dear friend Ricky’s studio in Bangalore called the Raveolution Studios. With a huge generous heart, he has waited as many years as I for the completion of this album and its subsequent release. His patience and tolerance has been commendable…and so is his colleague Abhijit’s support. He has pain stakingly recorded and re-recorded till I was happy. He has also programmed drums on couple of tracks with the help of our drummer friend Siva.
I have been blessed with contributions from some of the most phenomenal talent from Bangalore city and I will promise you a great sounding album very soon. Bruce Lee Mani on lead guitars, has turned around the sound of certain songs, especially Hey Bhagwan and the Kannada songs. The contributions from my earlier bandmate Manoj George on the violin has been tremendous. I also recorded Pandit Prakash Sontakke playing Hindusthani Classical on Hawaiian Guitar for the song ‘Ambar’. But the most rocking track has turned out to be ‘Khidki’…a completely different style of song compared to most of my compositons. Anirban Chakravarthy has layered his electric guitars on this song and this song probably will be the dark horse of the album 
. Lyrics for both ‘Ambar’ and ‘Khidki’ were written by a good friend of mine from Delhi, Niraj Rajawat. 4 bassists – JosyJohn from Kottayam, Gaurav Vaz, Rzhude and Keith Peters have performed on different tracks of the album.
The album will consist of 6 tracks in Hindi and 3 tracks in Kannada. Counter Culture Records was insistent that I include the three Kannada tracks I had composed without a single hint of doubt! I really appreciate and respect that bold gesture. I have been hinted at 3 videos over a period of time which means you will be seeing a lot of my band on the TV! The support of my friend Nisha Abraham who was instrumental in connecting me to Vishal-Shekhar and of another friend Shashank Ghosh (director of Waisa Bhi Hota Hai – Part2) who put me up at his lovely house whenever I went label hunting to Mumbai, and help me get introduced to many great people of the industry, has to be mentioned here.
So…here I am staring at my recording deal next to me on my table…it cant go wrong from here. Its just a matter of time now. 2 months max. See u then…the miracle will be complete.
!!
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