Metal goes Bollywood (Mika Singh)

Interesting Story I found

"Bollywood recording star seeks out young Canadian producer
Last Updated: Friday, November 2, 2007 | 5:26 PM ET
CBC News

When Mika Singh, a Bollywood recording artist who sells millions, was thinking about his next album, he wanted to take his popular bhangra style in a new direction.

So he sought out a little-known Canadian producer who works out of a studio in his Mississauga, Ont., home.

"It was a bit of a coup that I got an A-list pop star," said Vikas Kohli, 32, who started his studio FatLabs in 2003.

"I got a call saying Mika wanted to meet me. He was in Toronto for a day on his way to New York," Kohli told CBC News. "He showed up and we worked on some stuff…. I guess he liked what he heard."

Singh's one-day stopover turned into three days and then he called Kohli from New York to book the studio for two weeks.

The result is a mix of bhangra, a Punjabi style of dance music marked by a distinctive drum beat, with hip hop, blues and reggae influences from Kohli's eclectic musical background.

Bhangra was a traditional Punjabi folk music, but it has taken over the pop world in India and Singh is one of its biggest innovators. He drew more than 60,000 fans to a recent Brampton, Ont., appearance.

"He'd heard what I did with some of my earlier recordings," said Kohli, who works with a roster of young Canadian artists that includes Tash, GQ number One, Tef & Don and Reality, Zameer and R&B artist Priya.

"He was looking for that fusion with reggae and hip hop," he said.

The two-week recording session gave Kohli the opportunity to call in some of his stable of artists, including Priya, who sings in English on the track titled Whiskey, while Singh sings in Punjabi and Hindi.

"He had songs he'd been performing live, but they were not arranged," Kohli said. "The words were there, but we wrote new stuff to go into the song. It all came out of the creative process in the studio."

Kohli played in several local bands during his teen years and produced his first recording for one of them while still in university.

He then got his MBA and started working on Bay Street before giving it up to go back to the studio. He counts punk, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, soul and pop to country, classical, metal and rock 'n' roll among his influences, but Bollywood is new to him.

The first single from the album is due out next week and the video of Whiskey, which Kohli flew to India to help produce, will be released in two weeks.

An Indian recording company is waiting for the reaction to those tracks before releasing the full album, Singh's fifth.

The Whiskey video cuts live performance footage with a story involving a flirtatious girl and her jealous boyfriend.

In true Bollywood style, she opts for the nice guy in the end."

I wonder what a Metal, Rock, and Punk producer working with bollywood pop will turn out?

I think it will turn out good.

Mika is a great musician so he cant go wrong.

mika is as good as himesh i despise himesh singing 😆 😆

hey for all the mika fans out there i found some footage of him in the studio recording his new songs

youtube.com/fatlabs