Musician Neil Mukherjee makes a comeback to the Bengali music scene after 24 years

Musician Neil Mukherjee, who was the songwriter and guitarist in one of the most popular Bangla rock albums of the late ’90s, Poth Gechhe Benke, has made a comeback to the Bengali music scene after 24 long years. After the release of the album in 1996, Neil had left Kolkata to learn chitraveena from Ravikiran in Chennai. Then, he moved to Mumbai to play with AR Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and a few other bigwigs in the Hindi music industry.Neil’s latest project, Neilmukho, released online recently, which comprises four Bengali songs namely Raat Beraater, Dekhi Baare Baare, Bajaar and Chupi Chupi. The band comprises Shamik Chatterjee on bass, Ritoban Das on drums and percussions, Koustav Dey on guitars, Pritam Polley on khol and Neil himself on guitars and harmonica, apart from taking care of the additional programming and music production. Talking to us about his comeback with a Bengali music album, Neil said, “It feels great to be able to release some original music in my mother tongue. In fact, I have always been writing songs in Bangla and consider myself to be a Bengali songwriter. Although I have been writing and composing all this while but somehow these songs never got released. Finally, the process started on December 2019. We have five more ready tracks and waiting to be released and a bunch of others, which are to be recorded and subsequently released. I hope to continue doing what we have started.” Each of the four songs that Neil has come up with has a very distinctive soundscape from one another. “The song Raat Beraater has a heavy rock influence, talks about witnessing the journey through one’s deepest desires, expectations and the unknown. While Dekhi Bare Bare is a song about feeling lonely and caged in a crowded world and the ever migrating humans through space and time. The lyrics of the song are co-written with Joyjit Lahiri. Bajaar is a song with rock and Latin American influences. It has heavy guitar solos, multipart harmonies, which find their place alongside Bengali lyrics. And Chupi Chupi talks of a calling from a mysterious source, which one can feel and yet can’t be sure of. Each of the songs are very different and unique in its own way,” added Neil.