September 15, 2008
Their Music is as Exotic as their name, I can gurantee that first hand! Midival Punditz is a duo band comprising of two Delhites Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj.
Their music is a mix of Jungle, electronica, North Indian Classical and Sufi. In simpler terms, their music is a mix of indian classical and new age electronic club music. Their music is deep in terms of the ragas and instrumentation employed. Lyrically intensive, their music is timeless and progressive.
What they do best is let the richness and timeless feature of Indian music reign over the straight forward western beats. That makes their music very indian yet very modern. They add subtle, not obvious dancefloor influences that strike a balance with the musically rich past Eastern music. The duo is widely regarded as the first South Asian band to fully synthesize modern Western electronic music with regional traditional and classical music, to create a new sound for 21st-century India, so although the production sparkles with the sheen of an electronica or techno set, their music stilll sounds and feels like Indian.
They have composed music for the bollywood movie "Let's Enjoy!" and have collaborated with a number of reputed artists like Ustad Sultan Khan, Karsh Kale (he will be covered in the next post), Anoushka Shankar among others. Their music is Unique with a capital U! Its panoramic and ambient with experimentation done on almost all tracks.
I have seen people being apprehensive about this kind of music but one demo of their music and they can't help nodding.
Some of the recommended albums and tracks are:
ALBUMS
MIDIval Times 2002 - Debut
MIDIval Punditz Remixed 2007
Lets Enjoy(OST) 2004
SONGS
Fabric - Featured in monsoon wedding, a must listen
Mundiyan de dil hil gaye - Lets Enjoy(OST)
136
Ali - Ft Kailash Kher
Bhangra Fever - the famous Nokia 1100 truck ad's track
Night - Haunting lyrics and tune
Raanjhan - Ft Abida Parveen
Rebirth - Ft Anoushka Shankar
Tere Bin Sohniye - Lets Enjoy(OST)
Forest Dreams
God Of Love - A MUST LISTEN, crazily catchy
Dark Age - Again a must listen.. dark, mystrerious and ambient
I will end up listing all their songs, I guess... so will just list the first few tracks which come to my mind :)
So happy listening!
Signing off...
Talvinder Singh
Listen Without Prejudice
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Here in Los Angeles, I have had the privledge to meet them briefly years ago and see them live many times since.
Their debut album is still their best. Daring and untainted. The first track "Air" (although Chinese in influence) is structured perfectly. All others are great if not better.
Spread the word.