Two sides of the coin

Vocalist and guitarist Taimur Tajik talks about the release of his upcoming album 'Vice Versa.'

KARACHI: Vocalist and guitarist Taimur Tajik hopes his album Vice Versa, which is being produced by Faraz Haider, will be released in January 2011.

Tajik’s says his upcoming album “will have an aggressive feel to it”. The musician believes, “Aggression is an emotion; all of us have gone through difficult times when our emotions took over and led us to behave aggressively. I feel it is better that one puts this aggression in music, rather than take it out somewhere else,” said Tajik.

The album will have a variety of songs but will largely be a rock album, “People who like Guns N’ Roses as well as Aerosmith will definitely get the feel of it,” said Tajik who has found inspiration in the work of these bands. “Elvis is too old for me and Slash is my favourite guitarist.”

Three of the artiste’s songs have been produced by Haider, who recently released his own album Andher. “It is awesome working with Faraz Haider; he has an amazing ear for production. I plan to collaborate with him again.”

Unlike many of his counterparts in the music industry, Tajik sings solely in English. “I have a lot of respect for traditional Urdu music and it is wrong to say that I am down playing the genre.”

“ Rock and roll came from the US with Elvis behind it and all the songs were in English. My take is that because it began in English, it should be performed in the same language. However, I believe that music in any language doesn’t have boundaries,” said Tajik.

The album has been named Vice Versa because, “one looks at it both ways, one needs to understand where this is coming from and where it is going.” Tajik has been involved at every stage of the album and feels, “I am already successful after doing this. I don’t expect the album to be the best thing ever and if even a small group gets to appreciate it then that would be wonderful.”

“With my songs being ‘unapologetically heavy’, my album is not going to go on sale and is going to be launched for free and will be fairly freely available in the market.”

The reason being, “Once you put a price tag on something, it definitely changes the game,” says Tajik.

The musician believes that it will take time for hard rock to establish itself in Pakistan’s music market. “Pop music is commercial, it sells more and that’s probably why people are more interested in it.”

“It’s not that pop music does not require hard work but it is more like good apples and bad apples are all being produced in Pakistan and nobody is interested in oranges (hard rock) because that does not sell,” said Tajik

“People should be able to appreciate other genres of music and even make other types of music. Ideally other music genres should flourish in Pakistan, like it happens in America and Japan.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2010.