I’d like to introduce you to Neysa Mendes, a girl of many talents (and pretty too!) with a huge love for indie music. She volunteered to keep me up to speed on the indie music scene by contributing blog posts to missmalini.com and I am actually quite excited! So please give a warm welcome to my new indie music reporter!
[FYI – Neysa has been working with the indie music industry for over four years now. She started out working with Only Much Louder where she set up and managed one of India’s first indie music labels Counter Culture Records. She’s currently setting up her own business working with artists, bands and music-based companies and focuses on marketing, business development and public relations. Follow @neysaa on Twitter.]
*And if you’re thinking… er.. remind me what indie music is again? Its simple. in popular music, independent music, often shortened to indie music or “indie”, is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels and an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording and publishing. In India, “indie” pretty much represents all the bands and artists out there that are making music out of the realm of Bollywood. (Because that’s just how they roll.)
The Return of the Music Video
by Neysa Mendes
It looks like we’re going to see a whole bunch of music videos from Indian bands over the next few weeks. Bands have finally realized that it doesn’t matter as much if mainstream television won’t play their videos, that they should just go ahead and make the videos, because a large part of their audience is online. And we’re so happy that they are! I love music videos.
Shaa’ir + Func – Everytime You’re Around
Shaa’ir + Func, easily one of the city’s most prolific bands, have just made a new video for their third studio album. Monica and Randolph focus a lot on their visuals – their on-stage costumes and props, arresting photographs and also their music videos. ‘Everytime You’re Around’ is the first single on their new album ‘Mantis’ which we’ll finally get to hear next month, when they release it at Blue Frog! It’s a stop motion video set in the streets of Mumbai and you can check it out.
Tough on Tobacco – Taxi Song
Tough on Tobacco, Sidd Coutto’s oh-so-funny band have also just made their first music video! You probably saw the video for Taxi Song when Miss Malini posted it here. What you might’ve missed are the promo videos that the band shot for the video. This one is my absolute favourite. Someone please give Jai Row Kavi his own show!
Samira Kanwar, the director, also shot a making-of the video and it looks like the band had a whole lot of fun!
P.S. Did you notice the lil Tough On Tobacco goat hanging on the mirror of the Taxi Guy’s cab?
Coming up soon…
Scribe, Mumbai based hardcore band, also have a new video coming up for Dum Hai Toh Aage Aah! which features on their last album Mark of Teja. I got a sneak peek and totally loved it! They’re launching it at their gig at Blue Frog on the 5th of September, so you can catch a first look at it there. I’ve also heard that Ashu and Pentagram and working on new videos… I’ll post them right here as soon as they’re out.