Suraj Mani “Disillusioned”, was what he was as he penned down his first song way back in 2001 as part of a lesser known cover band from Bangalore. Since then, singer and ex-Motherjane vocalist Suraj Mani’s life has taken a full circle. More than a decade has passed and Motherjane has propelled itself to one of the biggest acts in India.
Everyone has been hooked on to every update from your blog and your interviews and Facebook pages ever since you announced the date. Now, two weeks into the release, how do you like the response? I must say that I’m very happy with the worldwide feedback I’m getting on The Tattva Trip and its collectors set for being so different. Coinciding with this first release of mine, my site www. surajmani.in is also up where fans can buy, gift and catch a glimpse of how I plan to earn my independence by directly reaching out to my core audience.
In spite of that, one of the biggest questions on everyone’s minds remains about your health. How is your back treating you now? Well, make no mistakes, I am a live artist and I love that side of music as much as I love writing and making music. Following a 45 day treatment at an ayurvedic centre in kerala last year I am in pretty good shape and I have symptomatic relief from my pain, even if my MRI still shows a ruptured disc. So as long as I don’t have to climb scaffoldings and stage dive into crowds I should be back in the scene. So yes, I am putting together a group of musicians to take The Tattva Trip on tour.
A year without traveling, touring and living the Motherjane life. Tell us about the thrills and chills of suddenly being by yourself. “The thrills and the chills” (laughs). I like that expression and yes, I momentarily did think about that when I started off. You see I was suddenly all alone and virtually picked up playing the guitar
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last year just to back myself. Being self-taught, I went by instinct, ear and heart and decided that I was going to not bother about conventional chord progressions, scales and genres. The songs kind of decided for themselves what they wanted to be and I recorded an acoustic version of the album and based on some serious recommendations from musicians I trusted, I took it to Alwyn Fernandes. Immediately realizing just how talented he was, I asked him to be my music producer and arranger because he brings years of experience, musical knowledge and basically so many things that made this album something that I absolutely loved doing. He also brought in the team of Aman Mahajan (keyboards/piano), Keith Peters (bass), Cajetan
Dias (Strings), Suresh Peters (Drums) while handling the guitar himself. These guys are brilliant and the ‘trip’ is what it is because of the chemistry we experienced together.
Tell us about ‘The Tattva Trip’ team and how it was working with them. We had a fun time, with Alwyn, Suresh and Keith coming down to the Aum-I Artiste studio in Kottayam and nailing the album down in a week’s time, took a break and then mixed it down in another week. Aman and Cajetan basically gave