By Amar Ayaz

The man who gave us those iconic Stop and Eject signs was not into art for art’s sake. For him, it was a way of life. Instep pays tribute to a rare shooting star…

At around noon on a Sunday, Omran Shafique sits in his apartment next to the neighbourhood bakery, above a carpet store, getting ready to listen to the latest album he downloaded onto his iPod. Always in search of new tunes and sounds to broaden his experience of music, the lead vocalist and guitarist of Mauj sits on a revolving computer chair gazing into his iPod as though in search of a lost track.

While noontime is not early for most, after a long Saturday which involved running between a photo shoot in the morning and a Coke Studio session at night, Omran should be resting at midday, Sunday. Instead he decides to call me over to chat about his longstanding love affair with music. {Read More…}

By

Sadaf Fayyaz

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” Carl Gustav Jung

“Mona is a song about a bad habit that people accumulate over the course of life time and we have given it the name Mona.” Omran

Finally Mauj has come up with their much awaited video “Mona”, directed by Sohail Javed. While first watching the video, no one gets a clearer idea of what the video is actually about. It features Sanam Saeed, Anisa Sheikh, Maryam Kazmi, the band members and some other actors too. {Read More…}

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The much awaited album of Kaavish, Gunkali has been delayed once again for another week. The new tentative date has been set as 15th of January ‘10. The albums scheduled after Gunkali were subject to delay based on the country’s situation and response on the albums but Devika (2nd Jan) and Kaavish (8th Jan) were planned to be released right on time.

Dr Yezdani said

We are on track for the first two releases Devika on the 2nd and Kaavish on the 8th. Let’s see how things go from there on.

This also means there is going to be a change in schedule for other releases lined up for January including Nida Arab on 15th, Mauj on 22nd and Sketches on 29th.

By

Madeeha Syed

Just when you thought it was all over, the music industry is abuzz with plans of album launches, collaborations, soundtracks, creative projects, the potential for solo projects by the likes of Rohail Hyatt and Co. In 2010, the music industry is slated to make a comeback with a vengeance

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan working on not one, but two albums!

The albums are slated for a late 2010 release but chances are that it could take till 2011 for his work to come out. One of the albums titled Koi Umeed will have four qawwalis, one of which – the title track – is a whopping 30 minutes long! It will contain poetry and bandish from Mirza Ghalib’s selected works. The selection of poetry and composition has been done by Mian Yousuf Salahuddin and those close to Rahat expect that this album will land him a place with the great maestros. {Read More…}

Update:

Two more albums have been scheduled for January 2010. Devika Chawla will come out on 2nd of January while sketches are making their debut on 29th of January.

Original:

COO, Fire Records, Dr. Akbar Yezdani, has finally announced release dates for albums of Mauj (Now in Technicolor), Kaavish (Gunkali) and Nida Arab.

All the albums will come out with gap of one week between each other. Kaavish, being first in the queue, will hit Pakistani markets on 8th of January ‘10. Nida Arab on 15th of January and Mauj’s debut will come out on 22nd of January.

Dr Yezdani also mentioned that the videos are also ready and the long delays weren’t really their fault. He states

Just pray that nothing drastic happens. We have been trying to do this for over a year now but each time there are either explosions, some political issue like elections, long march and what not. This time we are determined. Their videos are ready and hope all goes well. Do buy their CDs and support music

He also mentioned few upcoming releases which will include Sohail Salamat, Call, Annie & Noman Javaid.

Good luck Fire! We all hope that the albums actually come out in January. I personally have been desperately waiting for the release of Mona’s video and Gunkali.

As we reported earlier, Fire has some massive plans for 2010 which include a total of 60 releases, 19 of which are to come out in first four months. Fire has finally released the list of those 19 artists who are already in the release process. The videos have been shot already and will be released with each album. You can see the artist list below: {Read More…}

Dr Akbar Yezdani, COO Fire Records, has just made an unbelievable claim on our Facebook page stating that almost 60 albums will be released by Fire Records in the year 2010, 19 of which will be released in the first 4 months, schedule of which will be posted soon after the new year. He also stated that they have planned to release over 80 albums in 2011.

He has already shared the schedule for January which includes 3 major releases including Mauj, Kaavish and Nida Arab. The claim sounds unbelievable because year 2009 hasn’t been a very great year for albums and some major artists of the industry have went independent or even free.

According to the claim, 5 albums per month will come out which means more than one album per week. This also means, production of over thousand songs and at least 100 video releases.

If the claims are true and Fire has such massive plans for 2010, this is going to change the history of Pakistani music industry and the underground artists should already be prepared to send their demos to Fire Records. However, I certainly believe that Fire has to re-look into their contracts before making so many deals or the wave to change the music industry could even turn out to be disastrous.

Earlier we reported about Shaan working on his upcoming film, soundtrack of which was being done by Mauj, Zeb and Haniya and Mekaal Hasan. With recent news, we have heard that Shafqat Amanat Ali will also be doing a soundtrack for the film. Soundtrack will be a collaboration song by Shafqat Amanat Ali and Zeb and Haniya. This will be the first time that Zeb and Haniya and Shafqat Amanat Ali will doing a song together.

Shafqat says

We did meet in the studio a few a times and structured the song a bit. But Shaan has, since then, been out of touch and we haven’t worked on the song any further.

It is indeed the time that we need to hear some more stuff by Zeb and Haniya. Since the time of their album launch, they haven’t released anything, not even a video. Moreover, all the fans have kept their fingers crossed and waiting impatiently for the movie to come out.

As Overload and Mekaal Hasan Band release their records without the backing of a record label and pull it off without a glitch, Instep takes a look at the burgeoning music scene, record label battles and how the Internet just might be the way out

By Maheen Sabeeh

Throwing out the blame

Internet. The inescapable term that has become an intrinsic part of our lives. We tweet through our phones; share pictures and at times send pointed (albeit indirect) messages to people on Facebook… and that is just one small example. According to the CIA Fact Book, Pakistan had an estimated 17.5 million internet users in the year 2009. So if music sales are going down at stores, which they very much are, we can guess that fans are downloading and sharing albums online instead. {Read More…}