After creating distinct music for several Bollywood projects, singer-composer duo Clinton Cerejo-Bianca Gomes is back with trippy and out-of-the-box music for Anurag Kashyap and Tapsee Pannu's 'Dobaara'. In an interaction with ETimes, the singers praised Anurag Kashyap's style of work, spoke about their association with the director, their band 'Shor Police', the controversial social media post by AK and Tapsee on the cancel culture, and more.
The celebrity singers went down memory lane and recalled their long association with Kashyap. They also shared how they worked on the title track and background music of 'Dobaara'. Singer Bianca was all praise for the director, "We admire his work so much, so it’s been a real honour to compose the score of this film and also compose a song for it. He was very specific about the mood he wanted for the BGM (Background Music); beyond that, there weren’t any restrictions. A blank canvas is pretty much everything you can ask for as a composer."
Clinton added, "To do a song and score for Anurag personally for me has been like coming full circle in a way. I worked on the score of 'Gulaal' with Hitesh Sonik all those years ago, followed by 'No Smoking' and now after all these years, it feels amazing to be working with AK again. When we met it was like all the years in between never existed and it was like old times in a way. But yet his thought process is so current and evolved that it made sense for 'Shor Police' to work on this as our sound is extremely current and that’s exactly what he wanted."
Clinton revealed that the title track will also feature them singing together, which is unusual in Bollywood. "I think it was very clear that since the subject matter of the film is so trippy, we should do a song that feels equally trippy, especially the way it begins post the climax. The song also features us both singing together much like pop bands as DNCE do. You don’t hear that sound in Bollywood at all. So it’s a very different vocal approach and that adds to the trippiness of the song," explained Clinton.
"The song needed to tie in with the mood of the film. Without giving too much about the film away. We wanted it to have the same crazy, fast-paced, unpredictable nature that the whole story represented. Lyrically also, it was strongly connected to what the characters were experiencing during their journey in the film," Bianca reasoned.
The singer duo also reacted to Anurag and Tapsee's social media posts where they both asked netizens to ban their film and let it trend on social media. "I think these days the best publicity is when a film gets blocked, FIRs get filed, fringe groups take objection to a film’s content. It does make people want to watch the film even more," said Clinton. Bianca agreed, " Exactly. They say there’s no such thing as negative publicity and that couldn’t be more true for the film world. And I think that’s exactly what Anurag and Taapsee were hinting at, given the recent spate of controversies that have surrounded Bollywood."
The duo also spoke at length about their band 'Shor Police' as they concluded the conversation. "'Shor Police' for me evolved quite naturally on the back of the success of Coke Studio, and following that Ananthaal which was a fusion band featuring Vijayprakash & Bianca Gomes. Bianca was always known as a singer but it was during the composing sessions for Ananthaal that I discovered her innate songwriting sensibilities and thought it was completely contrasting my style but in a good way. We decided to meet to put down more ideas and there was a synergy that was pretty much there right from the start," recalled Clinton.
Bianca added, "We started 'Shor Police' because we wanted people to hear our take on classic songs mashed up with top 40 hits. It’s been so well received, that since then, we’ve been doing a lot of unexpected fun projects over the past few years. BGM and songs for films like 'Bob Biswas', 'Dobaara' and a few brand projects."
