The Score Magazine January 2019 issue | Page 48

MUKESH AMARAN ALBUM ARTicle: MANEK D'SILVA O ur Artist of the month is Manek D’Silva who has an interesting past with a cartoon fueled childhood that has shaped him into a fine artist with a loving sense of humour. “As for music, my parents made sure the house was always full of Rock Pop and Country. I sang in a classical choir, played guitar and made albums with Progressive Rock band Slain, and write lyrics for folks who need them. And while I’m taking a break from making or playing music for now, I adore listening to new sounds!”, he says keeping to the trend of incredible music shaping some incredible talent. In 2010, when the band Slain was releasing a full-length album and when Manek was still in art college, he wanted lend his skill. “I made it my responsibility to paint the best album cover ever. Not sure if I reached that goal, but it turned out good enough that over the years other bands also wanted me to work with them; I had a ball making album art for acts like the Raghu Dixit Project, Lagori & Perfect Strangers, and pushing my skills in the process. Alongside I also developed a deep fascination for letters and hand-made typography, so I started making wild custom logos for bands like Bryden-Parth, Best Kept Secret & Brotha V.”, he says. That’s quite an impressive set of artists who have used his skillset. Collaboration with a band like Funktuation is only the most natural thing that could’ve happened, given the fun and the quirks that the two sides are equally guilty of boasting. “I think pretty early on in the discussion with Funktuation we established how much I love the group’s musical vibe and performance attitude, and they love my funny designs and 46 The Score Magazine highonscore.com wild colours, we just had to put those things together. I had drawn a couple different sketches and directions I thought we could work with, so soon as they reached Bangalore for a concert we gathered everyone in a hotel room and talked about design possibilities till like 2AM. Their music merges Tamil folk and Bollywood sounds with punchy electronic funk, so the idea to have a Tamil dancer holding a boombox seemed too good to pass up. Then after a few weeks of spamming our Whatsapp group with pictures of jewellery, we had a finished album cover that blended Tamil traditions, retrofuturistic tech, funky letters and a badass attitude. The whole process was very collaborative, with everyone in the band throwing in fun ideas, but also just letting me run wild with the humour and styles that I enjoy.” The whole process that they have gone through, although hectic, has yielded one of the best artworks in recent times that carefully but accurately represents what the album is going to be about. Manek has also picked an interesting field that employs his skill set. As a comic creator, Manek writes his own web comic series today titled “Bonabyl”. “I finally launched my own web comic series Bonabyl (www.bonabyl.com), that satisfied my urge to draw terrifying monsters and cool fights and weepy emotional scenes. Classic Manek stuff. The journey’s been great so far, I’ve become a much better artist and writer from making Bonabyl, and I’m elated that the first volume is being printed and will be available as a book soon!” We wish to see more of Manek D’Silve and we sure know that we will be.