Chakdey.com Tigerstyle Interview 2008
Alot of people (we have loads of pessimists amongst us Asians!) have brought to light that they believe you left the best of the work for your album while allowing Bikram Singh's album float away on its own. What would be your reply to such a suggestion?
We would have to totally disagree. Our approach to each project is fresh and as it happens Bikram Singh’s album was produced and completed after our own, it just took longer for us to release ours. We are completely happy with our production on Bikram’s album. We had a memorable experience working on Tip Top as the creative stream flows so well when we’re in the studio with Bikram. Some people have criticised his vocals this time round, but we feel Bikram has somewhat matured as a vocalist and is challenging himself with the material he is now singing. Also his writing and choice of lyrics from other writers has matured and we’ve given him a much richer sound with the music this time than what we were able to on American Jugni. The radio campaign for Bikram’s release has been strong, it was just unfortunate that VIP Urban had problems securing the release in India and so the release date was push back again and again until it got so close to our own album release that we obviously started to actively promote our own album. Having said that we (and I’m sure Bikram would agree) are happy with the body of work on Tip Top. We’ve said this time and time again, we are artists and we make music which is honest and that we believe in.
I personally see yourselves as a more Folk orientated version of Swami, you have the same skills at fusing but you still include the desi touch with Dhad's, Sarangi's, vocalists like Mangi Mahal and Billa Bakshi. What is the secret behind your success, is their an ingredient that you think is in your album that say others are missing?
Again we would have to disagree. Swami are a whole different kettle of fish. We’ve been brought up in tradition…….we’ve learnt from Ustads and have been driven to carry forward the rich heritage which has been passed down to us. In saying that, we also love contemporary music. We’ve had a sharp ear for Hip Hop, Breakbeats, Drum n Bass and Dancehall while growing up, so what you hear in our music is a collision of these sounds, where the rhythms crash against each other and form new grooves, the styles get entangled and something new is created.
Many times the definition of the word Bhang has been distorted. In essence it means To Destroy. Our understanding is that we destroy the sounds which influence us to create this new consolidated sound which we call Bhangra.
Many of us will not have heard of Amrik Babbal who features on Maan Doabe Da, tell us more about the young vocalist?
I’ll be completely honest with you, we don’t know much about him ourselves. We selected some songs from a catalogue of recordings which we were presented with and chose some songs sung by Amrik. One of the recordings was used by Saq on his album a couple of years ago……the song was called “Mela”. We had been working on “Maan Doabe Da”, and an early version of the song featured on Project Gotham 3 Racing for the X Box 360. We then went on to further develop the song into the final mix which made it onto the MMM album.
We have another recording of Amrik which is a similar song to “Maan Doabe Da”, again written by Jind Swara. It has the same traditional folk vibe to it and we’ve started work on it for the next Tigerstyle album. We love the lyrics to this new song and are excited to be working on it after such huge public appreciation for “Maan Doabe Da”.
Not many artists would attempt to pitch Surinder Shinda alongside DnB dymanite UK Apache, what was the thinking behind the track?
We’ve been huge Drum n Bass and Electronica fans from our school days. I remember the first single I ever bought was Firestarter by The Prodigy. I used to collect recordings by the likes of LTJ Bukem, Goldie, Roni Size, Shy FX, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Leftfield, Stanton Warriors, Talvin Singh, Fun Da Mental, State of Bengal, Badmarsh & Shri, Nitin Sawney and loads more.
I think from the start we’ve always had this influence of non desi music coming through in our own music. In a recent interview with Bobby Friction on the BBC he described us as being an outfit caught between Bhangra and the Asian Underground. I guess that’s true to some extent.
The track came about after we had laid the Surinder Shinda vocals onto a Jungle riddim and passed it over to UK Apache to see if he’d like to collaborate. He heard it, loved Shindas voice and said it would be something he could work with but we’d have to really bring the production up to date with where the Drum n Bass scene is at currently. So we studied current Drum n Bass to be able to compose the music for this song and UK Apache helped in directing us to get the correct pace and builds. We wanted to give the music some new vibe so we fused it with a rock influence with subliminal eary ethnic soundscapes. It’s a pretty intense tune!!
How did you manage to hook up with dancehall star Vybz Kartel and as a reminder to everyone which other Carribbean or Reggaeton artists have you worked with?
Getting Vybz was hard work. We’d been in to speak to Greensleeves who are one of the major Reggae Dancehall labels. They had heard our bootlegs and wanted to talk. We let them hear our ideas and they suggested we work with Vybz on our single as he was their flagship artist. We waited over a year for them to get hold of Vybz but for some reason things were just not happening.
I then spoke with Nyrone Persaud who was managing Raghav at the time and told him we were having difficulties and he managed to get me a number for Vybz’s manager. I spoke with him but we just weren’t able to get anything going.
Meanwhile we’d been put in touch with a studio in Jamaica to put some ideas together for a different project so I spoke to the guys at that studio and it just so happened that one of the engineers was the tour DJ for Vybz. Overnight I emailed the riddim to him and he spoke directly to Vybz and came back with a positive reaction. Within a week we had the recording done, and the paperwork cleared.
We’ve worked on remixes for other Carribean artists such as Wisin Yandel, Don Omar and Luny Tunez. We’d love to spend some time out there cos we made some real good links in Miami while we were DJ’ing for the 1st Anniversary of Machete Music, but we’ve just not managed to get ourselves out there since.
All our Reggaeton work was the product of Toy Hernandez who was the A & R at Machete. Bhangraton was his vision and we worked with him in making it happen. Since then we have remained good friends and he has visited us in Scotland with some new ideas. Hopefully we’ll be working with him in the future. It’s a huge world out there and we feel blessed to have been able to connect with a similar scene overseas and build genuine interest and understanding of Bhangra music culture.
For many the track that people will be eagerly awaiting is Son of a Sardar part 2. You seem to have a strong focus behind religion which is portrayed in your music, so would we be right in guessing that you`ll be releasing a few more albums on the Immortal Productions line?
The original Son Of A Sardar was documented the origins of the "Sardar" identity, from the revolutionary teachings of Guru Nanak to the sacrifices of the 5th, ninth, tenth Gurus and the achievements of the Khalsa.
The song had such a strong religious tone to it that we were advised by religious groups to not include it on our commercial album which had allsorts of material on it. So collectively with Kanwar and his management team we decided to then rewrite the song.
We've now replaced all the religious references on SOS 2 with cultural/political figures who helped to further shape the Sardar identity. From Maharaja Ranjit Singh who established the first independent sovereign state of Punjab, and the general of his army Sardar Hari Singh Naluwa who fought off the Afghan invaders all the way to the Khyber Pass, to martyrs of the Indian independence movement Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Shaheed Udham Singh. The song has a heavier Hip Hop street vibe to it so its not just seen as a religious song but a conscious political song which reaches out to anyone who can relate to the phrase "Sardar".
We’re in the process of releasing a Religious compilation CD in India which features some of our back catalogue material as well as two new songs dedicated to the 300 anniversary of the Guru Granth Sahib gurgadhi gurpurb. These two new songs will also feature on the new Immortal Productions release this winter. There is also a video for Son of a Sardar part 1 in the pipeline as the song is going to get its first release in India this winter.
You also had the chance recently to perform at probably the 2 biggest stages any artist could dream about, Glastonbury and Electric Proms. What was it like performing on stages that have been graced by the biggest names in the UK music industry?
It felt great to be able to perform our music live. It makes us feel so humble when we put together a 10 – 14 piece band of some amazing musicians as we did for the BBC Electric Proms in 2006 and then for BBC Two’s Desi Dna earlier this year. The musicians all come from different cultural backgrounds and are trained in completely different musical disciplines to what we create so it’s a challenge to communicate the essence of our music to them in order to have them all work together to recreate it live, but through intensive rehearsals we pull together. Also I think we’re the first Bhangra production outfit to take our music to the live which for us is a huge achievement. We’d love to work more on the live show in years to come, there’s just so much that can be done, huge potential.
As producers, you`ve done live mix sets aswell as live band performances, when do you choose one over the other and which do you prefer?
Most of the time the type of event, budget and venue determines what type of set we perform. Our regular performances are as DJs, and sometimes if it’s a stage show we’ll add on MCs, percussionists, singers and dancers.
We’ve travelled to some far off places like Russia, Poland, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Dubai, Singapore, USA & Canada with the DJ performance, We thoroughly enjoy travelling and introducing our sound to new audiences.
We’ve only had the opportunity to perform with a full band twice, of which the Desi DNA performance of Maan Doabe Da was easily our most memorable.
You`ve worked with alot of young artists on the album in the past like Blitzkrieg, Kanwar & Shveta. What do you have in store for them in the future will there be more opportunities for them?
Kanwar has his debut album in production. He’s slowly building a good hype for himself after having collaborated with ourselves and Jazzy B recently. Blitzkrieg is about to start work on the follow up to The Rhyme Book which was out last year. Right now he’s busy collecting his thoughts. Shveta is a student so her priority is her studies. She has worked on a song with us for a theatre play which will be showing in Glasgow at the end of this month.
We enjoy working with new artists and we have some great projects in the pipeline all with brand new talent.
Also in the pipeline is a project with Des-C on the production of his forthcoming album, are there any other artists that you`ll be collaborating with in the future?
We produced Nachna Onda on Des-C’s forthcoming album. We’ve worked on some production for Hardkaur’s forthcoming album, we’ve recently worked with East London asian Grime artist Shizzio, there is also talk of further work with Mangi Mahal, and as I said earlier, we have a number of projects with new artists which we’re in the process of completing, which you’ll hear of soon enough.
One thing that i have got to hand to you, your a straight talking no nonsense duo. You may break a few hearts along the way, what do you think are the negatives aspects of the industry that need to be improved?
My main observation is that people really need to open their minds. There is a huge world out there and sometimes it feels like the UK Bhangra scene is just stuck in its own little pigeonhole. As artists we have so many influences and we have so much education behind us that we want to collaborate with other artists from other genres, we want to experiment, be creative and break open the mold in which Bhangra music has become so stagnant. It’s not our place to simply criticise the industry, its our job to change it, at least for ourselves.
What is the reasoning behind re-working tracks such as Akh Mastani & Jatt Mele Chaliyah on the actual album?
We wanted to collaborate with a Hip Hop artist on Akh Mastani so we recomposed the rhythm and drums on the song and had Iceberg Slimm lay something down for it. The previous version with the Punjabi drums was a successful track so we released it on the Balle! Shava! single as a b-side so it would be available to the public, but we felt the Hip Hop version which made it onto the album just worked better in that context. By fusing the music we’re also crossing cultures and with so much of our material being appreciated by the non-traditional and even non-desi Bhangra listeners it just worked better for us with the rest of the songs on the album.
Jatt Mele Chaliya had actually never been released legally. Somehow it was leaked and so the version which people may have heard was unfinished. I don’t think it is worth even comparing the released version of the song with the illegal version since we did not intend for the earlier unfinished version to go public. People mentioning the unfinished version are making it pretty obvious they don’t wholeheartedly support Bhangra music as they obviously download illegally.
Which is worse and why: Illegal Downloads, Dodgy Labels, Bedroom DJ's or Ghost Production?
Illegal downloads is obviously killing the industry.
I don’t want to comment on the dodgy labels as I have nothing to do with them.
I have nothing against bedroom Djs. A lot of great artists start out of their bedroom. What’s important is education, knowledge and progress.
For some people ghost production is a necessity, personally I have nothing much to say about it. Its usually Raj who goes on a rant about it…..luckily for you he’s in India right now lol
My only comment would be that we believe in making good honest music. Our music for us is an art form, its our expression of our inner poetic vibrations, it’s the ideas and sounds we hear when we don’t hear anything or think of anything. It means more to us than making money, or having a record deal or having our face on a CD or on TV. Its something we’ve been blessed with and no one can take away from us.
Its been a short yet detailed interview, we thank you once again for gracing Chakdey.Com with your presence! Any final comments that you want to point out to the readers...e.g. why they should pick up your album and where they can leave feedback?
Why should you buy the album?
If you are a fan of creative ideas, poetic, artistic and dynamic music then
I would suggest you take a listen, you might just like it…….
Images courtesy of Tigerstyle and BBC.
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