Crimson: an alternative fusion band with debut album Surjo

Music has no boundary. It is unlimited to represent the socio cultural tradition to the other countries. Bangla music has its own trend to create something new and present a rich cultural tradition to other nations. Lalon songs are one of those rich cultural heritages of our Bengali music. A true devotee of Lalon songs could never think of scoring fusion-rock or blues. That was what actually happened in case of Sarah Naz Billah, Senior Executive of CityCell and a music teacher of Chhayanaut and Omni School of Music, after she had listened to some songs composed by his friend Taufique, a student of Jahangirnagar University. It was the grooving period for Crimson, an alternative fusion band. The debut album of Crimson titled 'Surjo' has released recently.

Sarah and Taufique formed the band in the same year. She firstly proposed Taufique, "How would it be if we form a band together?" He had only seven songs in hand. The duo started practicing hard. Later, Amit, Adil and Taufique's old pal Sumon joined them. Working on the pilot project started at 'Balam's studio. It was accomplished with 10 fresh tracks in the end of last year. Impress Audio Vision Ltd brought out the debut album on April 16 this year.

Taufique, guitarist, composer and lyricist of nine tracks in the album, expressed utmost gratitude to the Almighty. He said, "It was a challenge to see how a female vocal artiste reacts to alternative fusion, slow rock or to the blues." He thought Sarah, the vocal, composer and lyricist of the title track, was worthy enough to perform with confidence and courage.

Sarah said, "When we were studying at Jahangirnagar University, we wanted to create something new and with this realisation we formed the band group Crimson. Surjo is our first album and we hope this could give a new dimension to listeners and music lovers."

"I passed most of time of my life in a nature oriented environment. I passed my school life in Gazipur and then studied at Jahangirnagar University. For this reason, nature always attracts me. I think, in the composition of music, there should have a creation. This creation could help to enrich the music and its composition, lyrics and rhythm," she also said.

While asking why you named the band group Crimson, Sarah said, "Crimson is a such type of colour which represent power, strength and light at a time. It has a huge impact regarding its colourful representation. In the name of 'Surjo' as our debut album we selected because the sun has its own entity, its powerful impact to all. For this reason, we want to emerge our performance to all and also want that music lover could get something new from us."

"I learnt Nazrul sangeet earlier. I have academic background of it. So I always emphasised on classical-based, pure music. For this reason, in our album, we tried to create a good composition based on lyrics," she added. The band members specially thanked Balam for understanding the conception and bringing out the real colour of music that they wanted to experience. Mostly western instruments were used and the songs resemble those particular emotions, chords, progressions and ideas, which is a natural sequence. Expecting positive critism from the listeners.

Among the band members, Taufique is a businessman, Sumon is working in NTV as programme producer and rests of members are students.

In the present scenario of our band music, most of them are involved to represent themselves as a mixed trend of eastern and western music. But most of time, this type of composition could attract the music lovers for a certain time. Then these are lost from the musical arena. Though, at present, fusion-based compositions are dominating in the arena.

They are trying to create new dimension and horizon to all listeners by their efforts. Crimson is that type of band, which is trying creating alternative fusion to music lovers.

Their restless efforts and multi-dimensional and truth voices could create a huge impact to the listeners where lyrics and fine tuning are composed very gently, which gives a successive manners in the Bengali musical arena.

They will continue their performance by their own way.

Present line-up of Crimson:

Sarah: Vocal, lyricist and composer.

Taufique: Vocal, lead and rhythm guitarist, lyricist and composer.

Amit: Drums and percussions.

Adil: Bass guitar.

Sumon: Lead and rhythm guitarist.

Shahriat: Keyboardist.
E-mail: shish_billah@yahoo.com