Fringe Benefits Make a Promising Come Back

Pleasurable Time for Fringe Benefits’ Fans

by

Sadaf Fayyaz

These are good news for the fans of Fringe Benefits. Fringe Benefits was a renowned band in early nineties with two good-looking young boys. A two member group with vocalist Shehryar and Keyboardist Mohemmed Ali, did a marvelous job with two of their song “Tanhai” and “Yeh Zindagi”, aired on Ghazanfar Ali’s Music Channel Charts. After Vital Signs and Awaz, the two most influential bands of Pakistan, this was a time when some new and fresh bands started their music. Many singers started their journey with Music Channel Charts. The band also did a peace song “Pyar Diyan Gallan” with Arid Zone and Fakhr-e-Alam. The album “Tanhai” did pretty well in the mid- nineties. After so many years, the band has decided to do some music again. There was a small session with Shehryar Kureshi of the band.

Q1: Why the group disbanded or was out of sight for so many years?

Shehryar: Ali got married and I too. So were busy with our jobs too.

Q2: Why did you plan for a re-union?

Shehryar: Finally both of us got settled with our lives and now we want to bring a pleasant change to the music scene of Pakistan and we feel that this is the right time, it’s now or never. Fringe Benefits are Shehryar and Mohammad Ali and it is not just one of us. Both of us get along quite well as we share common interests in music and movies etc. (It is not only because we are cousins but are also very good friends as well.) We stayed in contact even after disbanding (temporarily) and it was until last year when I composed a basic melody of a song with lyrics and asked Mohammad Ali to further improve and arrange its music, he liked the theme and melody of it and it was then we decided to make a comeback.

Q3: What difference do you find in the music scene after so many years?

Shehryar: The music has progressed rapidly and matured a lot over these years and now there are even better singers, musicians and composers in this field but very few have their own style and originality.

Q4: FB did very well in its initial years; do you expect the same kind of response as you got from “Tanhai” long time ago?

Shehryar: It’s up to Allah and our fans. Surely things won’t be as easy as there is lot of saturation in the music market but as you know that we have our own style of music. I would like to put it as “FRINGEES SOUND OF MUSIC.” Neither were we in competition with anyone back in 90’s nor we’ll be competing with anyone now because we had totally different kind of music and hardcore fan following back then. So this time we’ll be coming up with even more catchy and mature FRINGEES SOUND, a different genre of music. We believe in doing our own stuff and capturing the market with it rather than following the rat race and commercial trends of the market. We work with a motto that: “Don’t follow the world, let the world follow you“.

Q5: Is there any upcoming project, single or album?

Shehryar: We have almost completed three songs and some are still in the progress.

Q6: What are your expectations?

Shehryar: Well, we’ll do our best and can only HOPE for the best but we do have high hopes and Insha-Allah we’ll surely get a warm welcome from our fans worldwide.

Q7: Share a few lines on Studio 51.

Shehryar: Studio 051 is state-of-the art and probably one of the best recording studios available in twin cities. But as you know there is always a room for improvement in everything. Asad Kamal (the proud owner of Studio) is very knowledgeable, humble and supportive guy.

Q8: Share a few lines about new member Masooma.

Shehryar: Masooma is a very talented female singer who needs a break which she deserves, so Fringe Benefits will be providing that platform to her to prove her skills and make a mark in the music industry. She’ll be performing the “Alaaps” and backing vocals in few of our tracks. Fringe Benefits has only two permanent band members, Shehryar (me) and Mohammad Ali.
Masooma will be joining us as a temporary member for this project only.