Songs you should listen to: Voctronica, Dewarists & Aasma

We missed another week. Therefore we have three songs this time too.

First one is an a cappella cover of Ed Sheeran‘s blockbuster song from last year, Sing. This Mumbai band Voctronica (Avinash Tewari, Meghana Bhogle, Raj Verma, Arjun Nair, Warsha Easwar and Clyde Rodrigues) have been producing some impressive works these last couple of years. Earlier this year there was this wonderful cover of Alt J’s Fitzpleasure, and about a year back was the tribute to the 90s Indian ads which probably is their most viewed work, courtesy the AIB association. Coming back to this song, very well done yet again. Particularly liked the occasional experimentation they have done with the rhythm, wish there was more of that.

Dewarists does not continue to be the rage it was when it started off in 2011. It does however produce some good music even now; case in point is this trippy song from Episode 6 of Season 4, featuring Shruti Pathak and Nucleya. I have been a fan of Nucleya for his use of the bass; you should check out his Bangla Bass from last year’s Dewarists season if you haven’t, it is mindblowing! Here too, the best thing to do is to connect your headphones and brace yourself for the moment he says Drop the bass! The electronic elements meld well with Shruti’s classical-tinged rendition of Heer’s pining for Ranjha (Dub Sharma‘s lines, inspired by Waris Shah’s Heer Ranjha). Lovely singing. In short, best song from the season so far (at least from the ones I have heard).

In my interview with Vasuda Sharma in 2010 I had asked her about a reunion of her former band Aasma, and she had spoken of a comeback “soon”. Well the soon seems to have taken five years, but it did eventually happen. Ten years after their last album, the band came out with a Mother’s Day special single yesterday titled Maa Meri. Nice soulful melody rendered well by the band members (Vasuda, Neeti Mohan, Sangeet Haldipur, Jimmy Felix) and Sangeet’s missus, playback singer Anusha Mani. In the background Sanjoy Das‘s guitar work stands out. The song has a sweet video too, featuring the band members’ respective mothers. Nice comeback this!

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