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| Sunday, 6 February 2005 |
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Neththara: Youth - speak B & S' newest venture by Umangi de Mel They're among the pioneers of futuristic music in Sri Lanka. Having earned name and fame in the field, they take longer strides to make the local music fanatics yearn for more local flavour.
"Actually we were planning to release the album last September, but it got delayed because of other work," B&S say, adding that it's an international album with regard to the aspect of production. "We started working on 'Neththara' the year before last. Lots of production work was done in India for the album. What we wanted was to get some Indian expertise as well, blending it into a Sri Lankan production," they say. This time, the duo had a lot of international collaboration and worked closely with Indian musicians, "We collaborated with 'Bodhi' music and 'Sounds spectral' studios in Chennai and Mumbai to create great music. They talk about the difference between the new album and the previous and say, "There's an Indian touch and we used extra percussion like from the Tabla, dolak, (ethnic string instruments) and banjos. The production of the record is of a high standard and the album is different. There's a strong emotional appeal and we achieved our objective with this album," they say adding that it's an attempt to speak to the heart of the youth.
'Vasanthaye', our first album was like a new beginning, a fresh flavour that went to the masses. Our second album, 'Life' was portrait as something more towards westernised music. It was more of a hyped up, groovy album but the masses didn't exactly appreciate western sounds. They hungered for more Sri Lankan stuff," say B&S talking about their previous albums. "As a result we did 'Tharunyaye', our third album which had a lot of local flavour. We had a lot of songs which spoke about feelings and emotions but unfortunately the media didn't promote these songs. But in 'Neththara', having done a lot of research on both production and technical stuff, we've focused mostly on the emotions where we speak our hearts out. It's going to be a special album, cause it talks about the real rural Sri Lankan side. It's from our heart to yours," Talking about collaboration, the two of them have worked with Bonnie Chakraboorthy and Chinnai from India. Bonnie who's basically into Punjabi sounds blended his music with Chinnai's sweet Hindi melodies letting B&S fuse it with the local music. "We also got a producer called Paul Jacob from India who gave us the Indian flavour of production, and Nirosha Virajini sings 'Kirikodu', in the album. Lot of people mix Tamil and Sinhalese in songs to depict unity between the two communities but we didn't want to promote the two different languages in the song. Instead we wanted to bridge the two languages in a way that the listener won't feel the difference of the two languages." Speaking of the hardwork that went into 'Neththara', B&S say that Asanti, Nevanthi and Randhir were very supportive. The album contains 16 songs and the guys hint that it probably is the largest album. Nisther Cassim, Vasantha Dukgannalala, Hemasiri Halpita, Charith, Ashanthi and Randhir did the lyrics and the album was composed by Rohana Weerasinghe, Bathiya Jayakody, Santhush Weeraman, Shyama Sri Renganathan, Sarangan and Mahesh Denipitiya.' Although the album was launched on December 16th, distribution was delayed as a result of the tsunami. "But a few songs got good air play and we feared piracy, which is why we went ahead with the album distribution. The products are available in the market since February 1st." Giving a complete account on the rest of the people who are involved in the album, the duo introduce the two percussionists, 'Balu and Krishna play for A.R. Rahman in India. They're amazing players. Treated like Gods in that country, they are highly respected. They live a simple life and they look as if they don't know a dime about technology. "But their knowledge of futuristic music is quite amazing." Getting back to the album, they say that they did sweat a lot to bring it to a great standard. "It's a blend of English, Tamil, Hindi and Sinhalese. The tracks talk about youth issues presenting the album to different segments of the society," they reveal. Not forgetting their soon-to-be-released Hindi Album which will be launched in India, B&S say how the two of them got the break, "Actually Sony BMG and Universal were quite amazed with the music we presented. They made the comment that India has been waiting for this. We need to get the mechanism into play. We've chosen nine songs from our earlier albums for inclusion in the Hindi album. The music is the same, but we've translated the lyrics into Hindi. A guy called Dheeraj has been helping us with the album. It's for the Indian Market, basically we've exporting Sri Lankan music." Talking about a general issue, the duo say that there's a huge identity crisis in Sri Lanka. "We want to find a solution as to what is Sri Lankan and to stand on one platform and say we're Sri Lankans. Everybody's fighting for unity but unfortunately nobody knows to define what unity is. We've got so much of resources if we're united. We hope we could push the 'Proud to be Sri Lankan' aspect through our music. The day that happens, sky is the limit for us Sri Lankans." |
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| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
Breaking the silence, B & S have struck again with their latest
album - 'Neththara' 'Neththara' (project 4), the latest album of Bathiya
and Santhush produced by Sony BMG, was officially launched on December
16th 2004.
The duo mention that there's no particular reason for calling the album
'Neththara' and Explain that 'Neththara' is one of the songs in the album.
B&S say that they chose it because of an intuition that it will reach
out to a different market.
