Barson Huey, the debut album from Sanjo and Chandrani launched in New Delhi recently, represents an encouraging trend being witnessed on the Indian music scene. Like the albums put out by Rabbi and Indian Ocean, Barson Huey is an intensely acoustic album, rich with earthy instrumentation created using six and twelve string wood guitars. The songs themselves are refreshingly different with memorable tunes and deep insightful lyrics. What is thankfully missing is the standard bundle of tin-can techno rhythms, computer generated loops and other synthesizer-based sounds that characterise much of pop music these days.

The ten tracks on Barson Huey offer a refreshing potpourri of brilliant song-writing, excellent melodies, complex arrangements and intricate instrumentation, rounded off with great vocals and backing vocals. Even though the album will inevitably be classified under the Indipop category, a more accurate description of the music would be fusion. This element of fusion comes from the blend of inherently Hindi songs with diverse Western influences ranging from pop, rock and country to reggae, flamenco and salsa.

The artistes behind the album are Sanjo and Chandrani. Sanjo is, in effect, a one-man army. In the course of this project, he has worn many hats almost all the hats, actually. He has composed the music and arranged it. He has played all the musical instruments needed to make the songs come alive. Sanjos oeuvre includes the six-string acoustic guitar, the twelve-string acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, bass, keyboards, flutes, harmonica, tabla, drums, bongos and various other percussion instruments. Then he has also sung the songs and provided backing vocals in a number of tracks. And rounded it off by supervising the studio production and mastering processes. It is this ability to close the loop that makes Sanjo the consummate musician he is.

His partner, Chandrani, is equally talented. A trained classical vocalist, she has a special talent for writing sensitive, evocative, emotionally charged lyrics that add immense depth and meaning to the songs that she crafts. Since her childhood, Chandrani has always had a lyrics-centric way of listening to songs. Its the words that she focuses on first. If these pass muster, the song as a whole gets a hearing. Otherwise she just passes it by. Her tastes are very well-defined she doesnt believe in wasting time on stuff that she doesnt care for. And she applies this stringent, exacting yardstick to her own songs as well. She is her own worst critic.

Thus, as a lyricist, Chandrani demonstrates an admirable ability to use words as constructs for expressing ideas and emotions powerfully and meaningfully. Songs like the title track, Barson Huey, along with others like Sapno Ka Ek Shahar, Aanchal, Shayad Kabhi and her own favourite, Palkon Pe Tha, demonstrate this aptitude for making the lyrics look sparse and deceptively simple, while the underlying conceptual framework is complex and multi-layered.

In the studio, Chandrani is an amazingly versatile vocalist, doing lead vocals, backing vocals as well as harmonisations. She often multi-tracks, harmonising with her own voice, thereby providing both the lead vocals as well the backing vocals for some of the songs.

Chandrani is also the de facto Project Manager for the album. She is proactive and her managerial skills are considerable. Sanjo recalls the various roadblocks the project hit along the way and says that without Chandrani as a driving force, Barson Huey may never have happened.

Interestingly, Chandrani initially joined the project with a very limited role as a singer; she was supposed to do the female vocals and also provide backing vocals. A colleague of Sanjos, Gaurav was the lyricist on the project. However, after completing just four songs, Gaurav (in his own words) faced a personal tragedy he got married! While there is no known correlation between bachelorhood and song-writing skills, his marriage actually put paid to his role as a songwriter. Thats when Chandrani stepped into the lyricists shoes quite effortlessly, as a matter of fact and completed the remaining six songs. And thus, Barson Huey stayed on track.

To connect with fans and enable them to listen to sample tracks, the producers have also launched a website (www.musicbysanjo.com) with short bio-sketches of the artistes, lyrics of the songs, plenty of photographs and Mp3 downloads of clips of all the songs.

So what the future hold for this dynamic twosome? Sanjo and Chandrani have no intention of being a one-album duo they have already finished working on the material for their second album. Sometime during the summer of 2006, they will be back in the recording studios to produce the new songs. The as yet unnamed album is slated for release later this year.