MUMBAI: The much-awaited collaboration between two of India’s most popular and distinctive artists, Ritviz and Nucleya, was finally unveiled on Wednesday. The eight-track album Baaraat will be released over a period of eight weeks starting with ‘Sathi’ on August 6. ‘Sathi’ is the second of 22 releases that Ritviz will put out till the end of 2021.
Baaraat is where Ritviz’s classical music-tinged stories meet Nucleya’s penchant for different sounds. It’s a peek into their personalities, their musical sensibilities and their life. Encompassing the gamut of emotions and stages of a riotous celebration, Baaraat is a whimsical sonic exploration by Ritviz and Nucleya, and capricious in its ability to sound nostalgic and modern at the same time. The tracks are cheeky and playful, both in tone and message.
Interestingly, Baaraat is a sweet culmination of a story that began in 2016 when Nucleya – proclaimed as a desi bass pioneer by then – was impressed by 20-year-old Ritviz’s musical sensibilities and offered to master his four-track EP ‘YUV’. Over the years, the two have constantly stayed in touch, sharing thoughts and tunes, and a collaborative project was just a question of when.
Related Post
“This collaboration has been something I’ve looked forward to, because I’ve loved his music from day one and I often found myself wondering what we could create together, even though both of us have very different styles of making music,” says Nucleya of his collaborator.
For Ritviz, the prospect of creating a new kaleidoscope of sounds with Nucleya was the biggest draw, apart from “a dream coming true”.
“Musically, it’s been super exciting because I’ve always looked at both of our sounds as parallel lines, in the sense that he’s folk music and I’m classical, and normally we would never meet,” says Ritviz before adding, “But this album is that meeting point, and what we’ve managed to create is a whole different sound. It had its own challenges but we have both stepped out of our comfort zone.”
Baaraat was recorded in Goa earlier in the year, a place both Nucleya and Ritviz now call home. Over the course of months, the two musicians learnt to adapt to each other’s different working styles and found common ground in their appetite for creating something new and cool.
Acknowledged as the flag bearers of independent music in India, Ritviz and Nucleya have in the past few years rewritten the rule book for how independent musicians release music and engage with fans. From performing in stadiums to thousands of fans and racking up millions of views and streams across platforms, Ritviz and Nucleya have plenty of firsts to their names.
With Baaraat, they could also add 2021’s biggest dance music release to their name.
Ritviz: YouTube / Spotify / Facebook / Instagram
Nucleya: YouTube / Spotify / Facebook / Instagram
