Collaborative music is something that I have always enjoyed listening to and so here I’m. All of my songs in my first album are collaborations and many of the performers in the album are entirely fresh with almost no background of professional singing at all, it would probably be a debut for not just me but others too.

I’m privileged to have worked with the people I have collaborated with. All of them have a distinct style with a lot of depth in their own vocal characters. They’re not just good voices, they’re so much more. I would like to put it in a way that they have literally put up extra efforts to vocally act my songs to get the right characters out rather than just singing them. Each of them their selves understood the flow, absorbed the lyrics and lived up to the characters that they were given.

I love them all so much.

Before any vocal recognition, she should be credited for doing the vocals in intense warm conditions of my room with absolute no supply of fresh air, no air conditioner, radiated red walls and a compact space of not more than 3 feet in all directions. Not that she didn’t whine or make fun of any of this; still, I can’t thank her enough.

She was probably the first few people I became friends with in university and it was only a few months later that I got to know how sweet of a singer she was. I hardly knew music production then but sitting in the audience, I had envisioned an entire album.

Now that she is married and living in Australia, we hardly communicate or exchange greetings but we share a relationship that is par friendship.

She is dedicated when it comes to anything be it family, friends, career or music. She is one of the reasons that my album got initiation and now almost to an end. She was one of the first ones to believe in my ideas. I thank her for that.

She has the most amazing voice in my opinion and hence, she is the most integral act of my album.

Vocals for:

• Roz Khulasa
• Wake up
• Orange Shades of Yellow
• The Last radiowave
• The Ambassador to the Neptune Grooves
• Mehr-un-Nisa falls in love

My guide to troubleshooting music production.

Before I became friends with Jaffer in 2002, I had an image of a studio with huge red walls, long mixers, lots of LED lights, etc. Music was too analog for me then. It was after I met him that I got to know about sequencers and music production softwares. Jaffer has been an inspiration to me in terms of aesthetics and transparency of feelings translated in the language of music. In simple words, I learnt a lot from him.

I would communicate with him very less and would rather let him feel the song and decide the tone, let him do it his way. Working with him years before his first release, I was aware of his style and hence, I ended up making songs that would fit him, designing the arrangement around his personality and it actually helped the original characters of the album to be adapted automatically with no efforts.

Even when I look around the industry, Jaffer would always be my most favorite vocal choice.

My dying introvert nature has not allowed me to have continuous communication with anyone including Jaffer and now it does feel that we’re miles apart but music is the bond that keeps bringing us together every now and then.

I wish him luck for his band Kaavish and I know that he will be one of the biggest, most respected musicians around the world in the coming years.

Vocals for:

• The Last Radiowave
• Black Coffee
• Mehr-un-Nisa falls in love

Nida Khurram plays the character of an angel of death in the song “Death of Mehr-un-Nisa” but in the real life, she played the role of an angel on my shoulder.

I had made the song “Death of Mehr-un-Nisa” months before I had met her. The song went on a halt after other vocalists that I had in mind couldn’t commit to the dedication that was required. I emailed her the song for reference, met her only a few days after and as we recorded the vocals, it was pretty apparent that she was willing to commit to any extent to get it right as she tried harder every time.

I want to thank her for tolerating my annoying “Mr. Perfect” temperament, for meeting up the unreasonable timelines and understanding my ideas, appreciating them to the extent of being a part of it.

A lot of credit goes to her as well for bearing with my experimental ways of recording in my little red room and for delivering her best in intense warm conditions, less supply of fresh oxygen, less than 3 feet of space in all directions and all the same with the only difference of an air conditioner!

No one could have done this song better than Nida Khurram.


Vocals for:

• Raat Bazaar
• Badal Dunya
• Death of Mehr-un-Nisa

It was for a year continuously that I would visit rohail hyatt’s web page to listen to the Khuda ke liyein’s background scores, I was in love with the vocal pieces and under the label of voice, it said Zara Madani.

Skipping a few embarrassing, desperate measures taken by me to approach her I managed to send her a cd of mine and soon I got to know that she was in love with my track, I called her and asked her to come visit my place.

Listening to her mature voice I thought that she must be a fat, 45 year old woman, very arrogant and strict looking. On the contrary, the first time I met her, she came out to be quite the opposite. She was this thin, beautiful, very simple and a sweet sounding woman in her late 20s.
It came out as a shock!

Apart from my signature style music Zara Madani is also contributing to one of my experimental, abstract lounge track. It is something I always wanted to do but was scared doing it, thinking, it might not work.

I must say that it’s genuine fun to work with her. We would often experiment for hours, exploring the different sorts of sounds, sharing material, and actually enjoying music rather than letting go the fun part of it.

Vocals for:
Kia Jhoot
Above and Below