Radiant Souls says one can think of Secret Mountain as India’s gift to the world
Thirty-three years after his magical debut as a music composer with the Tamil movie Roja, AR Rahman is promising to dazzle again with a new kind of symphony. Rahman’s latest musical initiative ‘Secret Mountain’ is a virtual, AI-powered band on the Metaverse that is all set for launch in partnership with AI giants.
In the US recently, the Oscar and Grammy winning musician met with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Perplexity’s Aravind Srinivas, setting off speculation.
Speaking to businessline exclusively, Rahman said that Secret Mountain is set for a launch “as soon as possible”, and the company behind it — Radiant Souls — is currently tying up partnerships with Silicon Valley’s AI giants.
“Secret Mountain is basically a virtual band. I see it as a United Nations in the form of a musical band — one that brings together different cultures to unify the world,” Rahman said.
Envisioned as a global media IP going beyond just one album, Secret Mountain is the story of Luna, a young girl, who gets transported into an alternate world, where she then encounters six members of a multicultural band Cara, Blessing, Ekam, Zentam, David and Aafia.
The inspiration
When he was in Los Angeles for the Oscars, the thought of starting a Western band that could bring in the Eastern perspective struck Rahman. While this did not take off then, the musician made a second attempt during Covid.
This was the time when Unreal Engine, a 3D creation platform developed by Epic Games, came out with MetaHumans, a tool that gave creators the power to create or animate realistic virtual avatars, motivating Rahman to make the band entirely virtual.
“This way, the band members don’t have to fight with each other, don’t disband or don’t die,” quips Rahman. “More importantly, I looked at this as a way to give something to the world from India. Something special and something as diverse as us,” he adds.
A large team, including members from Rahman’s own immersive musical experience Le Musk, then worked on creating initial mock ups, and the teaser for Secret Mountain was thus put out almost a year ago.
“So, all this actually began before AI was a big thing,” says Rahman, adding that it’s not about using generative AI to replace the work of the artists.
“It’s neither generative music nor generative lyrics, and even the voice is human. What AI has done is to speed up work and add to the finesse of the output,” he says.
According to Rahman, except the six band members, it is all going to be real composers, fashionists, lyricists, philosophers and storytellers from across cultures.
“We could compare this to probably a 6X version of what ABBA did in terms of making themselves younger,” he says, referring to the band ABBA’s Voyage concert series that features their younger-looking digital avatars.
Vignesh Raja, co-founder, Radiant Souls, says one can think of Secret Mountain as India’s gift to the world. It will involve AI, but not in a sense to replace creativity, but to assist and power characters, custom train the models with their back stories, and for visual enhancements.
Published on September 28, 2025
