Making a mark of his own

His avant-garde, edgy scores have always made Prashant Pillai stand out from his contemporaries in Malayalam industry.
In his latest project, Chandrettan Evideya, the music maker���s sonic trajectory takes a new turn, towards a more modern yet classical feel. Its songs, especially Vasanthamallike, have struck the right chord with the listeners. In a freewheeling chat, we find out the songs��� ���behind-the-score��� stories and what else the singer is up to.
Teaming up with Siddharth Bharathan
I had collaborated with Sidharth Bharathan previously for his first movie Nidra as well.Working with him has always been fun, as he has a clear idea on what is expected out of the composer. All thanks to Sidharth, we could formulate the ideas well and put the songs of the film together. I don���t think our listeners expected me to come up with such scores, as I am mostly known to be experimental and offbeat with my music. We had fun working on Vasanthamallike with Haricharan, my long-time friend. As I couldn���t make it to Chennai, the song was recorded on Skype. A versatile vocalist, he did justice to the track and his voice gave the right oomph to the song���s picturization.
The track���s rough composing was in Hindi and my sister Preeti (Ee Solamanum Shoshannayum fame) had lent her voice to the scrap tracks, just as she does for most of my compositions. However, Sidharth got stuck to the voice and asked me to retain her parts. For the second song Kinavin Kilikal, I chose to work with singer Sreekumar as I wanted a simple, feel good, coming-of-age voice to carry it. Working on the film���s background score also remains a memorable episode for me. There were many boundaries within which I had to hold the music to suit the film���s overall feel. Pianist Frijo Francis also did a phenomenal job and the hit tracks took shape thus, as all of us could work well in tandem with each other���s creativity.
Composer brother and vocalist sister
I never wanted to be a composer or even knew what it is all about. It���s my sister and singer Preeti who encouraged me to become a music maker. I just loved sound and the music-making processes and got into the computer side of it. Writing songs and presenting it to our family were our favourite activities while growing up. My parents too were inclined to music; I was more into percussion. While I got trained in tabla, my mom enrolled Preeti for singing class. She would practice at home and I would play the tabla. Music for us was like having food three times a day.
When it comes to working with Preeti, I am quite a taskmaster. In fact, I am like that with any vocalist. Usually a composer gets a track singer to croon the scraps tune. I am blessed to have someone in my family to do it for me. It���s not a must that her voice is retained in the songs I compose, but many a time, directors have asked me to rope her in.
Upcoming projects
Double Barrel, directed by Lijo Jose, is my upcoming Malayalam project. He has conceived the film in such a way that it breaks the mediocre benchmarks and stereotypes we see in the industry. Like his other movies, music plays an important role in this film too.
I just wrapped up my first standalone Tamil project, Andhra Mess. It was fun working with people in the Tamil industry. They have brilliant ideas and are bold enough to experiment with their cinema. Andhra Mess is a gangster road-trip film and has three songs. I have also collaborated with Amrit Rao, the lead singer of the band, Live Banned, for the film.