Malayalees who closely follow reality shows do not need an explanation when they hear the name Merin Gregory.
Her rendition of 'Mere Dholna' in the grand finale of Idea Star Singer season 6 continues to be one of the most watched videos on YouTube. After winning the season, Merin got busy with stage shows and playback singing.
In between she decided to team up with music programme Aloshya Kavumpurathu and came up with Meralo Music Production. The duo composed cover versions of a few popular songs and to their surprise, one of those was aired on the BBC radio in UK!
“I met Merin from the industry, and in between conversation we thought of coming up with cover versions of songs that we like,” says Aloshya, who has been working as a music programmer with popular musicians like Gopi Sundar and Deepak Dev. Aloshya has worked behind nearly 38 movies in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada. In M'town, he has worked as a music programmer for movies such as Ustad Hotel, Honey Bee and 7th Day to name a few.
“Our first attempt was the song ‘Idhayam’ from Billa 2. It was not exactly a cover version, it is a re-arranged version and we put it up on SoundCloud. The response was really good,” adds Aloshya.
Speaking about the responses, Merin says, “The more we got good responses, the more it encouraged us to do more. To our surprise, we were contacted by BBC radio to air this song. It was amazing. All that we had discussed was to create some good music in our own style whenever we get free time.”
The duo went onto create covers of ‘Karmukil’ from Bachelor Party and the old hit melody Mizhiyoram from Manjil Virinja Pookkal. “The encouragement motivated and inspired us so much that we have now decided to come up with an own composition,” says Aloshya. On why they chose SoundCloud and not YouTube to launch their covers, Aloshya says, “We focused on releasing our songs on SoundCloud alone because it has a huge number of musically-inclined people from around the world following all kinds of music. We get a lot of listeners from outside India who encourage us.”
“Most of our discussions are over phone and that’s how we zero in on songs. I go and record and Aloshya does the rest of it. We are sticking to involving just the both of us for the production because it will help us give it our own signature style. We are also discussing on a video, we think it should be something that gives a good message,” explains Merin, who was on her way to a stage show.
