Groove Loves Company | unleashed

After years of planning and planning, I finally got my act together and kickstarted my band project last month. Its christened as Groove Loves Company, and I have produced and released the first album titled ‘debut’.

Groove Loves Company..whats with the name?
By now you should be knowing that I’m a fanatic of Ray Charles and am deeply inspired by his raw and earthy songs and sounds. The band/group/ensemble name draws its influence from Ray Charles’ last studio album titled “Genius Loves Company” which was posthumously released. The album performed by Charles features  several guest musicians, such as Natalie Cole, Elton John, James Taylor, Norah Jones, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson and Bonnie Raitt. Genius Loves Company was the last album recorded and completed by Charles before his death in June 2004.

Groove Loves Company was born!
Over the years I have built a circle of musician friends who with their simplicity, sheer passion, impromptu talent with a dash of extreme eccentrism or oceanic serenity have bowled me over time and again. I have learnt the little of music that I know today from them, their humility keeps me grounded and focused. I really wanted to do something for them, with them – a collaboration maybe…and then was born the idea of Groove Loves Company. So the idea was, I am good at rhythm and percussions and would love to have someone adding a voice, playing a few notes, and jam and jam for hours or maybe just a few minutes and make a track for ourselves. And I let the idea grow over me for years and then came a point where I called these friends in the middle of the night and said, I’m doing this stuff, and having your names on them..and they obliged.

Groove Loves Company – Season I
 I decided to release albums season wise featuring a set of musicians who would collaborate together on the tracks for the album. And mind you, these are not musicians, artists and singers who are in the circuit – they are fresh, raw, unsigned and have so much of passion in them when they perform, you feel the void when they’re not around. So Season I it was and I decided to collaborate with my friends, Shriram Sampath on flutes, Charan Raj on vocals and synths, Preeti Pillai(my sweet little sister) on vocals and lyrics, K. S. Krishnan on vocals and lyrics, and Rajendra Vallury on guitars. Though I had to shift from the orginal lineup as there were some technical difficulties in getting Rajendra recorded. So I had to replace him with Alok Kulkarni who has also done a fab job in the Season I productions.

Season I album “debut” opens to a fabulous response.
Season I album  was titled “debut” - plain and simple.
I also decided to put to up the album for free downloads.
The album was released under the label of Madras Blues ReChords – an offspring of Madras Blues, a company founded by me. The tracks in the album were planned for a weekly release that was spread across the month of August.

I had a ball of a time recording these artists and producing these tracks which really shows in the final output of the album. There’s a lot  of soul and passion that’s  gone into making these tracks special.  The album has been doing fabulously well with each of the released tracks crossing its download limit with my inbox flooded with mails on how people liked and hated the tracks .

I’m glad that this album is working out well and people have accepted the uncanny, non-formulatic sounds and arrangements. Till date the album has 4 songs released with 2 tracks more to be released. Give it a listen and share it and let me know how you liked it. If you like it, share it – spread it.

For those who have missed out on Groove Loves Company, check the link library given below.
Official Website :
www.groovelovescompany.com

Official Online Music Partner and Bandpage :
www.groovelovescompany.bandcamp.com

Official Youtube Profile :
http://www.youtube.com/user/groovelovescompany

Last.fm Profile :
www.last.fm/music/Groove+Loves+Company/Debut

Soundcloud Profile :
www.soundcloud.com/groovelovescompany

Myspace Profile :
www.myspace.com/groovelovescompany

Reverbnation Profile :
www.reverbnation.com/groovelovescompany