Faisal Rafi speaks on Kaavish, music production and more

November 10, 2009

Maheen Sabeeh
Karachi

Faisal_Kaavish-JafferWhile Mekaal Hasan takes a step away from production (to concentrate on his music), Faisal Rafi is taking young artists under his wing and as it turns out, is working on a plethora of records at his Silent Studio (rather silently).

Faisal Rafi is no stranger to the music industry and with has jumped into urban pop music production alongside his other classical projects. In the contemporary music scene, the most prominent record that has Faisal Rafi’s stamp includes Kaavish‘s Gunkali, which remains the talk of the town.

The record is a litmus test for Faisal, who is flying solo as a “music producer” with this record. But Kaavish’s Gunkali never seems to make it to the market. Speaking with Instep Today, Faisal Rafi said, “The album (Gunkali) was finished and handed to Fire Records over a year ago. It’s been pending release with them for a very long time, the video itself was shot in November last year. What’s being recorded is some new experimental Kaavish stuff, out of concern for the “up to date ness” of the first album since its been stuck with the record company for so, so long; some re-mastering was done. No re-recordings for the older album.” But Kaavish aren’t the only young acts in town working with Faisal. Another one is Raeth, the boys who remain famous for the pop ditty ‘Bhula Do’. Speaking on some of the upcoming records and their progress, Faisal said, “Raeth’s album is done and pending release with Fire Records. Maryam’s (Kizalbash) album is already out. Ayesha Omar‘s album is currently under production.”

Faisal-Rafi-1After Zeb and Haniya, Maryam and Ayesha should make for interesting additions to the music industry. Like Strings‘s Koi Aanay Wala Hai, where Faisal played engineer to some tunes, he may be playing a similar role for Karavan.

“A lot of the tracking and recording for Karavan’s album was done at our studio. Assad Ahmad is a childhood friend and it was a pleasure working with them.” Faisal is also working with Arieb Azhar and Taal Karisma.

“We just finished Arieb Azhar’s new album. It’s currently in post-production and features the poetry of Arshed Bhatti among others; as well as performances by Aamir Zaki, Jaffer Zaidi, Mannu, Raheel Manzar, Alan Simon, Fahad aka Freddy, Irfan Khan and myself.”

Speaking on Taal Karisma, the band that comprises of young National Academy of Performing Arts students, Faisal said, “Under production is Taal Karisma’s debut album, which will be a ground breaking musical effort from these extremely talented NAPA students. And all this in tandem with Shahi’s (Hasan) and my ongoing classical and folk music preservation and archiving effort, which will last till we live.”

So there we go. While concerts may have become rare, one thing is for sure. Some interesting young acts are coming up and they sound promising.  And with Faisal Rafi working round the clock, one won’t be wrong to assume that some of this music is bound to release sooner than later.

Source: Instep Today