Saturday, August 8, 2009

Too Much Too Young - The Diabolique Soulz Video

The Date: Somewhere in 2002
The Venue: The Old Auditorium, REC Silchar
The Occasion: The Final Year Farewell

The Video quality is bad and the audio is pathetic (there is no audio on the left channel and the right channel is all noise).
That's why I choose to borrow a song from "The Little Angles" to carry the video forward.

What we need to appreciate here is the over whelming response of the crowd to our performances. We just couldn't ask for more. Enjoy!



The Curtain Call

In this era of HD and when you see a digicam in the hands of every other guy in street; it really feels odd to put across a bad and grainy video of a band which we eulogise so much. I remember during those days only few guys had still cameras ( the film camera) and there was only one DV videocam in the entire college - the proud possession of Mr. Mayank Saxena!!!
This is a clip from an REC festival - The RENCO FEST. Unfortunately this is the only clip we have of the entire performance which featured all of our great covers.
But here's the fact - we were miserably low in our gear which consisted of
Electric Guitar: 1 noisy givson blue dimond - Ankur
1 rented 2 pickup guitar, make: Unknown - Chiranjeev
Bass Guitar: None
Accoustic Guitar: Hobner Jumbo- Vikram
Effects: 1 Distortion padel, make: Stranger - Whoever gets it!
Drums: Rented 5 + 1 drum set, make:unknown
Keyboards: Yamaha basic model ( dont remember the no. but definately not a PRO series) - Shovik
Congo: 3 piece make:Unknown - Sunil
Speakers, Monitors and Mic : The mercy of the premtilla Mic Man - He choose to increase or decrease the volume of the instruments - whichever pleases him more.



Subro and his version of Hotel California

Weaving unsung destinies

In this mad race for survival, I somewhere left behind the legs that used to walk for me as well as those that used to walk with me.."The Diaboliques"..My memory takes me back to a Utopian land, the land of the Soulz, the land of innocent dreams, unconditional friendship, unbound laughter, and those pristine melodies that made us so essentially the "Diabolique Soulz".

I was once asked by someone long back as to what made us name ourselves Diabolique soulz. Most of us were angels at heart (or werent we..:-) ) and nor did we sing or even listen to Death metal numbers (at least not me).Then why this explicit reference to something evil.Honestly speaking, I never had an answer to that question, nor do I have it now, around 9 years after we came into existence and then gradually vapoured out.

I nurture a dream to reunite, reunite as the "Vocal partners", a dream that I shared with Ankur and now sharing it with every member of the group. Music in its original form is divine, no matter what cult it belongs to, no matter who creates it and no matter who sings it provided he/she sings it from the heart.We are unable to put up our original compositions on the blogs, anywhere on the net owing to the fact that we are not protected from plagiarism, or because many of us feel that it will not grow beyond us and we would keep weaving our unsung destinies.My proposition to our group is to reignite and reunite the spirit of original music that lies hidden among many like us, through a protected platform (may be a sharepoint/website), which will eventually be exposed to the digital studios that may change fortunes and give many of those original minds/voices the right direction.

I would take this opportunity to pay my tributes to the very original Diabolique Soul "Late Rian Das", who walked with us in our dreams and will always be fondly remembered by every member of this group through the moments we lived together.May his soul rest in peace and his memories reignite our thoughts and our mission forever.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Juno - Soundtrack

Juno is a canadian movie based on the events that take place in the life of 16 year old girl Juno after she gets pregnant. The film basically shows a sensitive issue such as teenange pregnancy with warmth and in good taste. A sudden spike in teenage pregnancy was seen in the US post the film release. Time magazine called that "The Juno Effect" (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html)

This led to the film inviting stiff critisim of the culture police. Nevertheless the movie was well recieved everywhere and got several academy award nomination including the best actress for Ellen Page for playing the lead role. If you haven't already seen it, i would highly recommend you to do so!

Coming back to the subject...Juno soundtrack is absolutely in sync with the theme of the movie...pleasant and laid back.
Most of the songs are accustic and has a very raw and natural feel to it. Most of songs are by Kimya Dawson, but there are classics such as "All the young Dudes" by Mott The Hoople.
My personal favourites are:
"Pizza, Newyork catcher" by Belle & Sebastian, and the absolutely sweet "Tree Hugger" by Angsty Pants.

This is a kind of Album you would like to listen on a lazy sunday afternoon when you just want to sit down , lean back and do nothing.

Lend your ears to it, just for the sake of feeling earthly!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Happy Friendship Day

Me and Ankur having a great time in Ankur's house!!! Talking about the diabolique days.... Watching our old vidoes (will be uploaded very soon!!)... Our great Kangkan shome with "Run to you"... Shouvik Dhar with his all time favourite - "Better man" [:)] .... Subra with Hotel California... Dipyaman with "anjane khyun"... Mama with "dur dur.."... Arunabh introducing our group... and many more.. "Summer of '69" - "Aap ki dua" - "Purani Jeans".... "aare yaro" yehi to zindagi hein.....

wish we had a get together soon....!!!