It’s not every day that four genres of music— trance, future house, hip-hop and alternative rock—merge in one song. With his recently released new-age indie pop song ‘Daastan’, Bollywood playback singer Amit Mishra achieves just that.
Collaborating for the first time with music composer and lyricist Apoorv Singh, Mishra is certain that the youth will like the song. Inspired in part by Sting’s haunting ‘Desert Rose’, Singh says he wanted to have a similar effect with limited lyrics.
While Singh has also done the song’s arrangement, Yash Pandey produced it, Tosief Shaikh mastered the mix and the guitar is played by Rakshit Wesley from Armenia. The collaborators aimed at keeping the track in crescendo mode. “While blending the track’s four elements together, we made sure that each genre compliments the other,” says Singh. Keeping the pace of the music in mind, they first started with hip-hop, followed by alternative rock and future house, and ended the song with trance music.
Amit, who is known for Bollywood chartbusters such as ‘Bulleya’, ‘Galti Se Mistake’, ‘Tubelight’, ‘Ding Dang’, ‘Fikar Not’ and ‘Allah Duhai Hai’, calls himself a “music director’s singer”. While dabbling with new music styles and global music genres is almost second nature to him, he has also been working on creating artificial intelligence-based virtual shows, which will be out soon. “I enjoy observing the projections of various singers in genres such as jazz, blues and alternative rock. I try to make my music relevant by working on vocals and expressions. I have been practicing a lot of head voice, because Bollywood is all about soulful throat music,” he says.
Elaborating on his experience of working on ‘Daastan’ with Singh, the talented singer says after the initial talks and a rough cut, he was impressed enough to not let the song go. Besides, the fact that it was part-alternative rock and required him to showcase his powerful vocals made the song a winner to him. “I wanted very much to be a part of it,” he says. He is also ready with two new songs that will release with a big music label soon. Not just that. He promises his fans a bouquet of 20 tracks this year—all different from the other.
Singh is celebrated in the music circle for his popular liquid drums acts that are showcased across the globe. He is working on a number of singles this year. One of his devotional tracks, ‘Jai Shree Krishna’, released recently, and another Sufi song with Anand Tripathi will be out soon. He is also working on a Bollywood project. Further, he has collaborated with music composer Palash Muchhal for another hip-hop track.
For Singh, his love for experimenting with different musical styles gave birth to the idea to create something new with Daastan. Through the making of the song, the DJ-turned-composer—he curated The Apoorv Singh Show, where he performs as a DJ, drummer, percussionist and rapper—wanted to prove that trance or hip-hop does not only work with English lyrics, but with Hindi ones too. Further, the track was created keeping in mind that it should resonate with the youth. Needless to say that the creators are overwhelmed with the response they have received.