MUMBAI: The upcoming Bollywood period film ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy’ is already making waves in the industry for its interesting soundtrack, which is supervised by Sneha Khanwalkar and boasts an interesting improvisation of original music by independent artists. One of them is a nu-metal band called Joint Family. Drummer Shardul Mehta spoke to Radioandmusic.com about the band’s track featured in the film, and gave us details on upcoming Joint Family projects and the other band he is currently working with – SundogProject.

Excerpts:

How did Joint Family get involved with creating music for ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy’?

We got a phone call from Dibaker Banerjee Productions regarding this, pretty much out of their interest in acquiring a song which followed a great amount of correspondence over email. The team was very keen on picking one of our tracks. Having watched the show (Byomkesh Bakshi) when we were younger, none of us had any objection supporting the “Byomkesh Bakshy” franchise. The rest was pretty much just paper work.

Were you specifically asked to improvise the track ‘Life’s A Bitch’ in some particular manner?

We were asked to allow them to use that track off our début album, and if it would be possible to make a track or two, specifically for the movie. We had to decline the new tracks mutually as it was not feasible to make them quickly with the same 'JF' quality and subject matter seal of approval, as well as being out of the soundtrack budget. So, 'Yash Raj Films' and 'Joint Family' settled on only ‘Life's A Bitch’.

We were not directly made aware of why exactly this track was used in the film, but the impression we got was that it would be used in some scenes (for which you will have to watch the movie to know for sure). It had the sound they wanted, and they were adamant on using this particular track. We even re-recorded it (to accommodate a 5.1 surround format for the motion picture) as there were complications with the original master copies following the death of our founding member/bass player – Clarence Gonzalves. It was also used as the background for the initial teaser trailer for the movie.

Is Joint Family working on something new? Will there be a new album?

Yes, Joint Family is working on new songs with new members joining the fold. There will be another album out, but the details of what, how and when are not going to be disclosed until the bulk of the work is over.

Will the sound of the upcoming album be different from ‘Hotbox’? If so, how?

Joint Family has always had an accessible sound which young kids and older age groups (18 - 40+) can really identify with and enjoy. I am not saying it is for an 80 year old, but it definitely is more palatable than many 'hardcore' forms of metal. For the most part, kids and young adults from Indian metros and other towns/cities are really into that 90's vibe of rock-metal. We hope to push that sensibility a little but still give everybody exactly what they need, while giving ourselves some room to have fun. I guess we will just have to wait and see how this shapes up.

Do you plan to release a new single anytime soon?

Cannot say too much, but yes, there will be new things happening soon. We try to stay pretty active on Facebook to keep in touch with folks that like our music and want more of it.

Are members of Joint Family working on other projects? If so, which ones?

Almost everybody involved with Joint Family now, is involved in many different music projects. For instance, I am currently involved with SundogProject, along with my Joint Family bandmate Rahul Sainani. Rahul was previously a part of Cyanide, and has played with The Midival Punditz, Still Dirty, Grain and many other artists over the years, being their 'session player' or 'music collaborator'. Shashwat Pandit, our new guitarist, plays for other bands like Grammy Winning Effort and October. Our new bassist, Nikhil Rufus Raj, is a founding member of The Indigo Children and The SuperFuzz. He is also a well know musician with a fair amount of industry experience with session work and background-scores.

Is Sundogproject working on anything new?

At the beginning of the year, as SundogProject, we shot a music video with upcoming New York based music video director – Blake Farber. He has an impressive portfolio including the likes of Alicia Keys, Beyonce and many other artists. He is a great person to work with and he really helped capture the visual art style SundogProject was going for.

What other material does SundogProject plan to release?

We recently released a few single tracks on our SoundCloud page, which were originally part of our upcoming album ‘TORA’. We decided to release the tracks as a precursor to the album, just so people could get a taste of what was to come shortly after. Apart from the singles already on SoundCloud, we have a few video releases and will also put out another single ‘Static’, shortly after the release of ‘TORA’.

SundogProject has a lot of music to share with an audience that we are slowly developing. Truly, it is impressionist art, put together as an auditory experience, which can be best heard with a good pair of headphones in a solitary moment.

Over which distribution platforms do you make your music available to the public?

All our projects use different modes of distribution. As Joint Family and SundogProject, we mainly use iTunes, Amazon Music, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Myspace and YouTube. We do usually have physical copies of albums on sale at concerts along with merchandise.