We got you covered on the Bangalore Edition of Bass Players. Now, it's time to explore the talented bunch of bassists who are defining the music scene in Mumbai. Scroll down to see the list!
Anish Nair
Anish has been the bass player for the band Coshish, since October 2008. He is also an ESP Bass Endorser (courtesy Furtados). For Anish, playing the bass came naturally, what with being a Carnatic Violinist and all! According to him, it's a thinking man's instrument and he loves the way the bass serves the melody. Brian O'Connell, of Pakistani band Junoon, was one of his earliest influences. Anish loved how Brian made bass lines that one could sing to! Victor Wooten, Jon Stockman and Justin Chancellor (of TOOL) are some of his other inspirations. Anish will soon be playing an RB series bass, crafted by ESP along with his favorite funk bass players, Francis Rocco Prestia.
Benji Johnson
Benji was born and raised in Kuwait. As a kid he always wanted to be a guitarist! However, after moving to India, he soon realized that there were plenty of talented guitarists chasing their dreams. That's when he chanced upon the bass and learned that he had a natural inclination towards the groove. He was the bassist for his college band 'Abstract Blues' and they happened to win many accolades while they lasted. He has also toured around India along with Live Jam and The Sheldon Bangera Band. He currently plays sessions with several other artistes/bands. His biggest influences come from different gospel artistes!
Melroy Coelho
Melroy picked his first bass guitar when he was still at school, just to get a few of his folks to jam together! But his love for the instrument grew immensely and that passion pushed him to take it up full-time. Melroy doesn't shy away from the fact that grunge and funk were some of his biggest influences growing up; outfits like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Screaming Tree and RHCP (especially), had a big impact on how he played bass and he says that he was more often than not associated with being "that bass player who plays funk!"
But as he grew up, bassists like Victor Wooten and Michael Manring inspired his style. He's played for outfits like Panick Attack, Groove Lab, Naked Earth, Dream Out Loud, Dog Ate Disco and Overhung.
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Sheldon D'Silva
Sheldon was taught how to play the acoustic guitar and the bass as a kid by his father. He instantly fell in love with the Weather Reports cassette that his father had got him, which had a tune called 'Teen Town'. He got hooked to the track because, for the first time he saw how the bass was the forefront of a song, and Jaco Pastorious completely annihilated the tune with his voice, skill and virtuosity!
Sheldon's influences also include Toto, Sting, Michael Jackson, Weather Reports, The Beatles and bass players such as Matt Garrison, Tom Kennedy, Gary Willis and Dave Carpenter among others. His buddies Gino Banks and Sangeet Haldipur have been his mentors during his growth period as a bass guitarist.
He's had the opportunity to perform with some of the biggest names in the music scene such as Mike Stern, George Duke, Ravi Coltrane, Earl Klugh, Zakir Hussain, Louiz Banks and Talvin Singh and outfits like Indus Creed and Gypsy All Stars among others. He's currently working on projects with Niladri Kumar, Rakesh and Friends, Loiuz Banks Matrixx Trio and his own band Nexus.
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Mohammed Asif Khan
For Mohammed, the low frequency of the bass is what called out to him. With all the versatile music he listened to – jazz, pop, rock, progressive – the fact that at the end of the day the music inevitably focused on bass intrigued him!
Outfits like Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd, Opeth, God Is An Astronaut and Blackfield influenced his music and his growth as a musician. He's been a part of bands such as Mitotic Symphony, Pratyul Joshi and Convoy, The Coolwater Projects and Eargasm The Band and is currently a member of ML Sutra.
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Ariel Samson
The one thing that caught Ariel's eyes when attending shows and concerts was that, people take notice of the guitarists, but never the bass players! But as soon as the bass stops, the song just feels empty! This intrigued him to take a shining towards playing bass. He was a member of Sound Of Silence and is currently the bass player for Paradigm Shift.
Ariel's inspiration comes from outfits like Porcupine Tree, Oceansize, Tool, The Pineapple Thief, Pearl Jam, Alter Bridge and Karnivool among others.
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Aditya Jain
Aditya started his journey by playing leads and being a sound designer/composer. Knowing multiple instruments seemed like a good idea to boost his career and 3 years ago, he picked up his first bass guitar. His inspiration comes from outfits and artistes of different genres. For example, The Raghu Dixit Project, Junkyard Groove, Indian Ocean, John Mayer, Clay Walker, Daft Punk and U2 among many.
Aditya has an impressive list of bands he's been a bass player for: Trip Recipe, 1.2 and is currently the bassist for Indo Gypsies. He's also worked as a sessions guitarist/bass player for various song compositions for TV and ad films.
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Cleon D'Souza
Cleon started off playing the acoustic guitar in church about 10 years ago, picking up a few casual lessons from his friends. Three years later his dad gifted him a bass, a Yamaha rbx260! It was the first time he'd seen one up close. He says he enjoyed the low end sound right away and decided to explore it further. Cleon till date owns that bass along with a Cort Dlx 5!
Among the great number of bassists that have inspired Cleon, Mike B, Victor Wooten, Rocco Prestia, Billy Sheehan, John Myung, Karl Peters, Sheldon D'Silva and Josy John are some of his favorites.
Cleon started his journey in a gospel band called Yeshua around 7 years ago and played concerts all across the country. Since then, he's been with Supervibe which is an alternative funk rock band. He also freelances and is currently playing with singer-songwriter Hriday Gattani, Parthiv Gohil, friends from the Kroonerz project: Sahiljeet Singh and Mann Taneja and two Gospel projects as well called New Wineskins and True Worshippers.
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Ruell Barretto
According to Ruell, "For me, bass playing started similar to most others. I wanted to play in my college band (desperately) and guess which was the only vacant spot available...yes...a bass guitarist!" This was way back in 2002. Ruell has been brought up listening to a lot of old school retro, MoTown, pop, reggae and rock. He is now more tuned to funk, new disco, dancehall etc. He draws inspiration from RHCP, RATM, Incubus, Jamiroquai, Weather Report, Bruno Mars and Boney M. Bassists that blew his mind away were Jaco Pastorius, Flea, Stu Hamm, Michael Manning, Scott Devine, Victor Wooten etc. He first played bass in a band called Aftertaste, which he co-founded. His current band is called Bombay Bassment and he is also a part of Laxmi Bomb. Add a lot of recordings, sessions and collaborations with various artists like MadboyMink, Uday Benegal, Vasudha Sharma, Adil & Vasundhara, Alms for Shanti, Aazin Printer, Sidd Coutto, P-Man, Anushka etc and this professional bassist surely seems to be going places!
Roshan Samuel
Roshan is a self-taught bass player who learnt the ropes watching other bass players online, and his rendezvous with the instrument actually began with the guitar. He learnt how to play the guitar at during his engineering at the age of eighteen. At a college show in 2007 where one of his friends was playing, he picked up his bass guitar for the first time out of curiosity and that was when the gradual shift from guitar to bass began. Cliff Burton (Metallica) was the first bass player who inspired him to learn and practice even more. It wasn't long before he joined his college band to play in shows and competitions across North India.
His inspirations are bass players like Dave La Rue, Victor Wooten, Alex Webster, Erlend Caspersen (Spawn of Possession), Nick Schendzielos (Job for Cowboy). At present fretless bass players like Jeroen Paul Thesseling (ex Obscura), Dominic Forest (ex Beyond Creation), Robin Zielhorst (Exivious) are the ones that influence him as he hopes to play fretless bass in his bands sometime soon. Other bands and artists he likes include Abysmal dawn, Cynic, Decrepit Birth, Dying Fetus, Evan Brewer, Guthrie Govan, The Faceless, Ne Obliviscaris and many more.
During college, he was part of a band called Silenced a heavy metal group from Allahabad. In Mumbai, he has been a part of Atmosfear a 3 piece groove death metal band, Abstracktr a technical/progressive metal band, Relapse in continuum a progressive melodic metal band and finally Spiked Crib a symphonic black metal band.
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