In early 2014, as Mumbai-based live hip hop act Bombay Bassment were working on their debut album, they approached indie veteran producer Randolph Correia a.k.a Func.
This resulted in Correia taking a stab at the songs, and working hard to add his own touch to the band’s signature funk and reggae sound. When the band finally heard what he had done with their songs, they thought it “was totally, almost uncomfortably different”. Running out of time, the band shelved the project and stuck to their original, live-oriented approach for their self-titled debut. Now, two years later, Correia’s radical reimagination of those songs has finally been released as a new remix album, Bombay Bassment x Func VIP .
“The sound was so different we needed some time to wrap our heads around it,” says Bombay Bassment frontman Bob Omulo, who has been a long-standing presence in the city’s hip hop scene. “But at the same time, it was not something we wanted to throw away because it had its genius.”
The opportunity to go back to the project finally arrived when the band signed on to artist management agency Mixtape earlier this year. Bombay Bassment was planning a new EP, but Mixtape stumbled on the songs Correia had worked on and insisted they release it first. This was followed by Correia reworking many of the tracks to ready them for release. In the end, the album takes the band’s songs and places them in a completely different musical context: one that mixes dancehall, reggae and club music with distinctly Marathi and Mumbaiya sounds.
“I had Bombay on my mind while I was producing these songs,” says Correia. He went into the project with the aim of capturing how Mumbai consumes and adopts classic sounds of reggae and hip hop. “This city’s going into some mad places when it comes to music.”
Omulo says, “It totally spins the character into something absolutely different”, adding that Bombay Bassment fans will not be expecting what is on this album. “It’ll hit them like ‘where did that come from?’ It brings a breath of fresh air, it’s adventurous. It totally brings a new character, new feel, new everything to the music.” So the band’s classic breakout single ‘Hip Hop (Will Never Be The Same)’ gets an electro-makeover. It is straightforward bass and drum rhythms replaced by a sinuous bassline and arpeggiated synth riffs. ‘Show Me What You Got’ gets the typical Func treatment, transforming the song’s eponymous challenge into a playful invitation to the dance floor. And ‘Bombay Blues’ becomes a hands-on club banger with overblown bass and the slow painstaking build-up that is bread and butter for EDM producers.
Omulo and the rest of the band — resident DJ Major C, bassist Ruell Barretto, and drummer Levin Mendes — are all set to take this new 10-track album on the road, starting off with a set at AntiSOCIAL, Khar, on Friday.
Gigs in Pune, Chandigarh, Delhi and Bengaluru will follow. But the highlight of Bombay Bassment’s summer will be their set at the prestigious Glastonbury Festival later this month. “Glastonbury is still a fantasy right now,” says Omulo. “Perhaps we will believe it when we are at the airport about to take-off. This will be definitely the highest point for us as artistes. Not sure we can even pray for anything more.”
The author is a freelance writer
