Gig Review: Rise Of The Zombie Music Launch

Boomarang at Bandra Amphitheatre

January 16^th, Bandra Amphitheatre: On Wednesday night, we showed up at the music launch of Rise of The Zombie that has been co-directed by Luke Kenny hoping to catch a good gig. We were keen to watch Boomarang from Aizawl, who’ve been known to deliver winning performances at festivals including Nagaland’s Hornbill Music Festival, and Mumbai-based artists such as Suraj Jagan, who hasn’t performed in the city in a long time.

The film’s lead actress Kirti Kulhari and co-director Devaki Singh kicked off the show with their cringe-inducing, gushy take on the film. The gig started with a performance by Slow Down Clown’s drummer Arfaaz Kagalwala and guitarist Anurag Shanker, who have mixed and produced four tracks for the film’s soundtrack. Kagalwala chose to turn vocalist with this gig and puzzlingly enough, Boomarang, which includes a livewire vocalist in Atea, served as the backing band. A minute into “Dil Pukaare” and we realized that Kagalwala was better off behind the drum kit.

Caralisa Monteiro on “All Alone” delivered one of best performances of the evening, but all attempts by the Bollywood playback singer to rouse her audience that comprised mostly kids and their parents on an evening out at Bandra Bandstand, yielded little response. The only other time that the evening began to look up was when Aditi Singh Sharma coaxed the audience to join her on “Tanhayee”, a catchy pop rock single arranged and mixed by Kagalwala and Shanker. 

The night’s emcee and the film’s lead actor, Luke Kenny, truly spooked us when he announced that he would sing at the gig, but later decided to invite a group of b-boys to dance to “Zombie,” a song that has been credited to Kenny on the film’s soundtrack, instead. The fact that the b-boys were meant to look like zombies but didn’t, worked out well since the kids who were called on stage seemed to be finally having a good time.  

Keeping in line with the rest of the kooky proceedings of the evening, Kenny played a video message from composer Biddu, who has also contributed to the film’s soundtrack. We lost Biddu after his WTF opening line: “I couldn’t be there [at the launch] because I’m meditating in Bangalore for world peace and against corruption.”

The audience was promised a big surprise act for the evening. Those who stuck around realized that this meant watching a Ukranian model dance with actor Ashwin Mushran. When it was time for Jagan to perform “Free Your Soul,” his track on the film’s soundtrack, he warned that he hadn’t rehearsed with the backing band [yes, Boomarang again]. The bass and drums were loud enough to drown out Jagan’s vocals. 

When Kenny announced that Boomarang would finally get to perform, some of us were hopeful that the gig was going to take a turn for the better. But the band performed “Home” as they struggled with the sound and seemed to lack energy. Kenny then abruptly brought the show to a close. It was 10pm and time for the zombies to pack up. 

Check out the slick trailer for Rise of the Zombie here: