Midival Punditz back with album after six years

After a six year wait, veteran electronica band Midival Punditz is ready with its fourth studio album Light, filled with rich folk influences and featuring a medley of musicians across different genres.

Comprising Delhi duo Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj, the band has been on a four city tour to give fans a preview of their latest work, scheduled to launch on April 28.

The band recently toured Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore as part of 'The Step Up by Johnnie Walker, Midival Punditz Light - Album Launch Tour'.


The event here saw a huge number of music enthusiasts grooving with opening acts by Curtain Blue, the Delhi-based electronic music artiste and Viraj Mohan, the winner of the Step Up challenge before the Midival Punditz took over the stage with their Indian folk infused with electronic beats.

The album that took two years in making includes performance-based songs and marks the band's venture into Indian classical and folk's fusion with electronica.

After their previous hit Twilight the band has again collaborated with Rajasthani folk singer Kutle Khan for the track Baanwarey making it the highlight of the new album.

Working extensively on making their music an audio-visual treat, the duo say they made the album Light for a more lively feel so as to resonate the experience of a live event for the listener.

“This album is Midival Punditz sound but it’s got a lot of Indian folk. We thought about the fact that consumption of music in this day and age is going out of CDs, people listen to singles a lot and live shows are a hit these days.

“Realising this fact, we made an album, based around a live show and we understood that folk is something we want to work with. It's got its own rustiness, a lot of reality,” Gaurav Raina, one half of Midival Punditz told PTI in an interview.

While for some artistes, collaborations with other musicians becomes a tricky job in attempting to combine different creative spheres and musical knowledge, the Delhi-based duo welcomes collaborations.

Their new album features a bouquet of musicians such as flautist Pt Ajay Prasanna, Papo, classical singer Malini Awasthi and American Producer Todd Michaelsen to name a few.
The Punditz say it’s all about learning new things and expanding their horizon in genres as they grow with them.

“Collaborating is all about respecting each other's talent and art form. We have to understand the art form, the nuances and the mode of expression in Indian folk or classical music. You have to respect the music and then combine it with yours. It’s not a tough thing for us to do,” says Raina.

The Midival Punditz say they used real life experiences of tours and live concerts as an influence into making music.

Realising that there was a gap of six years between their releases, the band thought
of giving fans a glimpse of what they have been upto in the meanwhile.

“It’s always about surprising the audience. Doing something new and rediscovering your own music. We all gather influence from our lives, life keeps changing, experiences keep changing so should the music.

“For us the point is to write good and honest music and we see that we have a lot of influences from Indian classical, folk and old school Bollywood and we are inherently electronic producers who have grown up in clubs and with electronica music. So we bring all of that together, that’s how the music is formed,” says Raina.

Playing around with live and performance-based music, the duo said they decided to name the album on similar grounds too and thus the title Light.

“The name indicates the dynamics of a live show. A live show is all about lightness and darkness, not just about the lights on stage but its more about the kind of music, it emphasises dynamics for us. The more the light, the brighter the song, and darker the light the darker the song or music,” he says.

Since the inception of Midival Punditz in 1997, Raina says the journey so far was great and it was interesting to see the cropping up of new genres and artists experimenting with them.

The band has remix credits for Bollywood soundtracks such as Don and Chak De and has also composed the background score to Karthik Calling Karthik with Karsh Kale.

They have also licensed music to Hollywood films like Closer and Television shows such as Prison Break and Six Feet Under.

According to Raina, artistes should try to be original with their style of music even while working in different genres.

“We have pretty much engineered the birth of electronic music in India. It’s been very interesting to see how the electronic music has taken over. But it can only grow this much till the artistes themselves don't grow. It is always determined by the artiste who make the music. So, its important to keep continue growing,” says the musician.

“It's important to have a very strong individuality as an artiste. Genres will come and go, you should always have a very personal style and not follow the pack,” says Raina.