Natasha Noorani has accomplished a great deal as one of the forces behind Lahore Music Meet. She has worked with Coke Studio in the past as well as with Strings. And yet, she’s just starting out and quietly growing into one of the most gratifying artists of our times.
Co-founder of the beloved Lahore Music Meet festival with the equally talented Zahra Paracha, Natasha has sung on records such as the Chalay Thay Saath OST, Ali Suhail’s Pursuit of Irrelevance and Gentle Robot’s EP Feel.
Having joined her LMM partner Zahra to form the duo Biryani Brothers and first covering a Poor Rich Boy track in the past, the duo returned this year with an original track. Attached with a music video for the beautiful and visceral ‘Ikisvi Sadi’, they managed to steal our hearts.
That said, it’s Natasha’s new EP Munaasib that is her most personal and transformative effort yet.
For the album’s artwork, she has collaborated with Sana Nasir - illustrator and art director for LMM and the Nepal-based Sine Valley festival - where Natasha has also performed. Sana Nasir is also the art force behind all the artwork accompanying Strings songs released from their newest studio album, 30 in the year 2018.
Munaasib contains five songs with ‘To Get Her’ being the first single. Other songs include ‘Fever Dream’, ‘Apocalypse How?’, ‘Work’ and ‘Occupy’. Natasha has written most of the songs except ‘Fever Dream’, which is co-written with Ali Suhail, a giant in the music field if you follow his work closely. In addition to singing, the record tells us a narrative about what kind of songwriting Natasha is capable of. The sublime effort includes collaborations with Daud Ramay and Ali Suhail, who has produced the album. Mixed and mastered by Adeel Tahir (aka Eridu), it is everything you won’t find in the mainstream circuit but a release that we desperately needed featuring verses that say things we can’t often articulate, say out loud and admit to ourselves and/or to others.
