Our first album will be on sale soon: Jeet Thayil

The blend of jazz and blues, funk and rock, and electro-pop makes you want to groove to their tunes. The Mumbai-based duo, Jeet Thayil and Suman Sridhar who walk the tightrope between performance art and musicianship, were in the city recently for an hour-long performance and regaled the crowd with their histrionics backed by powerful vocals.
Sridhar and Thayil, as they are known in the music circuit have a lot on their hands this year.They are bringing a dark Indian twist to opera production with The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir. “We started with a 10 minute opera, now it is a full blown project, which requires serious planning and rehearsal,” says Jeet. Up next, there is also an album in the pipeline. “Our first album has been recorded in London and will be on sale soon,” says Jeet, adding, “For our second album, we already have our material ready.”
So how does Jeet, a poet and author manage to juggle his different interests? “It’s the same thing - writing songs and poems are like dipping into the same well,” says Jeet.
Meanwhile, Suman, the other half of the duo who sang the remixed version of Hawa Hawai in the film Shaitan, has been enjoying the limelight. Does Jeet see a pattern forming with indie artists lending their voice in new-age films? “It depends on perception, we think our music is mainstream,” says Jeet. “However, the rest of the world thinks differently” he shares.
The duo complements each other in an exceptional way, while Jeet thrives on the spoken word, the latter lends operatic grandeur to the acts.
Of late, the duo have been touring around the country and abroad for fests like The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, UK.
They plan to draw in a larger audience. “We are going to start projecting visuals on screen simultaneously with the performance,” he signs.