Anbenum Peruveli

Anbenum Peruveli is an album that is a result of days of talking, discussing, jamming, recording, remote recording & delivering. It was 11 months back when I approached Sean Roldan with a proposal to do an album of Vallalar songs. It was a project that was conceived & commisioned by Vignesh Sundaresan & his Onemai Foundation. As we sat & discussed on what we wanted to do, Sean suggested we form a band specially for this purpose. He wanted to go totally old school – get the band together, jam around, come up with the songs before recording. The first meeting was with Sean, Vikram (Guitar) & Ramkumar (Drums) at Beachville café. As we bounced ideas we knew we were on to something. I was the old fogey desperately wanting to get out of my comfort zone. Sean was the brain who would put it together. Vikram & Ramkumar were seasoned professionals who realized what this could be and where it could take us. We needed a bass player to complete the circle & Vikram suggested Shalini Mohan from Bangalore. The driving force to the whole experience was Sean & his restless, boundless energy and creativity. We were not even sure what genre we were aiming for. Just mentioning rock, celtic, jazz, blues in the conversation resulted in phrases, grooves, beats & notes taking form. It was a wonderful process of creation with a composer leading it & the band following suit adding a note here or an idea there. At the end when we sat & finished the whole recording sessions & heard the first scratch it was one of the most fulfilling of experiences. Of course more work was to be done. Kalyani Nair joined the project to assist in the arrangements & remote recording with an orchestra in Macedonia & Celtic folk instruments at Abbey Road studios, London. The whole process was also simultaneously video documented by a team lead by Director Rafiq Ismail. The result is the documentary film that was released. Besides the team also created 6 music videos of the songs visually showcasing the brilliant creative interpretations by different artists and artistic forms. The website will house the entire project including the album, music videos & the documentary film.