Songwriter and musician from Chennai Sudeep Swaroop made a cut in Bollywood with a bang by scoring chart-busting music for the collaborative film by 11 film-makers, X: Past Is Present. He also wrote the background score for Mona Darling, flaunted as India’s first social media thriller, which released last month.
A self-taught musician is a happy man, who enjoys creating music in layers and believes in minimalism. “(Actor) Anshuman Jha was taken by my music in X... He remembered every line of my songs from the movie, and he got me this opportunity,” says Sudeep.
About Mona Darling’s haunting music, Sudeep says, “We played with eerie voices, action strings, rising violins, cellos and tweaked gramophone sounds.
Though I can record a 54 track/layers of music for an orchestral theme, I kept the music minimal, scary, hauntingly eerie and yet uplifting with choirs and glorious angelic sounds. I instilled a new sort of a feeling with filters and compressors. Playing with an equaliser and reverb made all the difference.”
Sudeep says director Sudhish Kamath’s Side A Side B was about a musical couple preparing to part ways. “The story happens in a train, and the rhythm of the train was part of the music and the score. It’s a simple organic album featuring just the voices of the singer-actors and raw acoustic guitars.
I composed eight complete tunes in 40 minutes. The actors performed these songs on a 44-hour train journey from Guwahati to Mumbai, which is what the film is about.” Side A Side B was shot with two iPhones with special gear with actors Rahul Rajkhowa and Shivranjani Singh performing their songs live for the camera.
The 33-year-old has also composed a song and an orchestral score for Kamath’s science fiction movie Ek Nayi Duniya. Sudeep has two albums lined up next. “I am working on my Tamil album Kaathadi to be released in June,” he says.
His Hindi album Saathi will be out this year-end. The album is about the complexities in a relationship of a man and woman, their fears, insecurities and the reassurances that define a relationship journey.
Sudeep doesn’t just like high-octave songs with thumping beats. “I like epic battle cries and uplifting dance sounds. At the same time, I like a simple Bob Dylan track with just a guitar and a voice singing the pure lyrical truth,” he says.