Keep up the shor

Keep up the shor

Clinton Cerejo and Bianca Gomes are on a tangential journey. With the wind in their hair, high on wanderlust, the two are road tripping in a swanky Audi as they sing a funky song. With oodles of style, and fresh sounds, Clinton and Bianca introduce themselves as a newly formed band — Shor Police. You can relax your risen eyebrow now, they aren’t taking a 180 degree turn from their Bollywood careers, but indulging in this collaboration to satisfy their creative prowess.

“We don’t just plan to do original songs, but also try out a few covers. In fact, we plan to try mash ups of Indian and international hits and present them in a very cool, funky format. I think when it comes to doing covers, people can be a lot more imaginative than they usually are. In the West, some of the best artists in the world have done covers — taken other people’s songs and made it their own. They’ve done so much more than just lend it their voice, they’ve changed the music, experimented with the arrangement. That’s how we want the covers by Shor Police to be,” says Clinton, to which Bianca adds, “We just want to do stuff our way, the intention to form this band isn’t to exclude Bollywood from our lives in any way. We’re trying to create a sound that is electro-pop, and we want to render certain Bollywood songs in that direction.”

Playing that funky music
To understand the kind of sound they want to explore as a band, you have to check out their track Anjaana on YouTube yourself. But Clinton describes that it has a lot of funk. “Our sound is pop — I don’t mean that it belongs strictly to the genre, but I speak from the aspect of popularity. Pop gives us a broad palette. We don’t want to restrict ourselves to one genre or stick to a set of rules. Our focus will be on what can make our song popular, all the while keeping it as simple as possible so it reaches maximum listeners. You never know, tomorrow we might just release a fully acoustic track too,” says Clinton.

As Bianca puts it, the band wants their songs to have the feel of the songs that are listed on charts like the International top 40. “The idea is not to make our songs too experimental, but have as much fun with it as we want,” says Bianca.

Sustaining the band 
Clinton admits that he will always be busy with commercial work, and before getting involved in any project, he makes sure that he will be able to make time for it and be committed to it. “I have been involved in too many projects where not everybody is willing to put in the amount of time required for it and are not fully committed to it. Then the project fizzles out. Before your get yourself involved in a project, you have to think what you want to express as an artist. If you are willing to sacrifice your commercial work in order to express yourself musically, only then will the project take off and be successful,” he says.

Pointing to Bianca, Clinton adds, “We both have that mindset from the beginning. If I didn’t find a good collaborator I would not have gone ahead with this.” Bianca confirms that they are on the same page. “Work for ad films or Bollywood will always be there. But it was important to do something out-of-the-box and here we are,” she says.

Plans ahead
If you have any doubts about whether this outfit will be performing at music festivals, doing solo concerts, and releasing more singles, you’re right. “There are plans of all that, but first we are concentrating on getting out as much material as possible to create a fan base,” says Bianca. Clinton explains, “We want to build a fan base because when people come to see us, they will come to see their favourite song or cover. They will hopefully know the lyrics and the tune, they will be familiar with our music. Once we have a few videos out, it will be a better time to say ‘We’re coming to your city!’”

Clinton’s wife, Dominique, a playback singer who sang Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein from Rock On!, is the official ‘namer’ of his projects. She’s the one who came up with the name for this band as well. Will she be featured in any of their tracks? “You never know,” says Clinton adding, “Dom as well as other friends might collaborate with us in the future. But now, it’s all about the sound we want to create. We want our listeners to have a clear picture in their mind about what kind of a band we are. We are aiming for maximum relatability.”

The band will be releasing their second single soon, but for now, they’re tight-lipped about it. “All I can say is that it’s going to be a banging track in terms of audio and video,” ends Clinton.

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