A fresh entrant into the city’s regional music forum, seven-piece ensemble, Chitrapuri Talkies’ powerful drumming and heavy guitar riffs delivered a cinematic overtone at The Moonshine Project for the first time. While adopting rock, metallic, folk, bluesy and jazzy cadence, the band primarily covers commercial Telugu, Tamil and Hindi film scores. The present line-up includes Prem Sagar Siddoju (vocals and bass guitar), Ram Manoj Patnaik (vocals), Rohit Uday Kumar (guitars), Aravind Kanaparthi (keys), Akash Kishore (drums/percussions) and Sound Engineer, Pavan Grandhi. This Monday, Chitrapuri Talkies returns to the venue to enthral the audience. A sneak into their impending set list gave us an idea that they will be performing music covers of local releases like Aditya 369, Pokkiri, and Geetanjali.
Chitrapuri Talkies first created their eponymous music channel on YouTube. Prem, who has been a musician for as long as a decade, develops and builds on his re-harmonisation, melodic paraphrasing and orchestration, to the outfit’s musical arrangement. “Every band should be known for their sound and we add our own spin to our renditions,” he tells us. This is not the first time he is going to bear the band’s creative control. Last year, before establishing the outfit, Prem weaved the influences of raga Bhairav and emphatic metal into Ilaiyaraaja’s Jagada Jagada to dub the piece. “The song is about youth. While Bhairav is a powerful Hindustani classical raga, metal is an aggressive genre in music. By blending the two, I sought to add a unique essence to the cover,” he adds.
This year, the band executed its first ticketing show at the second-day performance of the Saheri Food Carnival at Rajahmundry. “The crowd was huge. We caught its pulse, gauged the taste and preferences of our audience and tweaked our set accordingly. We made sure to catch the attention of all age groups — from children to the elderly, so everyone could sing along to our music,” Prem tells us, adding that the band has another ticketing show lined up at the venue in April.
Last year in mid-July, before Chitrapuri Talkies, Prem took to doom metal with erstwhile band, Immortal Peace. He went on to release his first original content, Ninnu Cherka, now streaming on 36 music platforms worldwide like Spotify and iTunes. A song about contrasting and poles-apart emotions, it draws inspiration from his personal transition through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Prem alone penned its lyrics and helmed the single’s composition, audio and video production. Sometime later, he met Rohit, Akash and Arvind and got them on board. “Then I auditioned Ram and that’s how our band felt complete,” he tells us.
Chitrapuri Talkies performs on February 20 in Jubilee Hills.
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Twitter: @PaulChokita