Faridkot’s latest album Phir Se draws inspiration from cosmic love and nature. Guitarist Rajarshi Sanyal tells P Gupta why the tracks stoke nostalgia among music lovers
The second albums comes after a hiatus of three years. What led to this delayIJ
These songs were actually written sometime in mid-end 2012. After that, we had to figure out the studios to record since we wanted to take the production quality to a much higher level than before. Once the recordings were done, we hooked up with a great mixing engineer in lA called Christopher Fudurich. This happened solely through email and skype and it was a long and arduous process, which took almost six to seven months. So, the time was mostly spent in logistics and getting everything together.
How would you describe the music and songs of the albumIJ
Electronic music made through rock and roll sounds. We started writing the songs in 2012. At that time, a couple of members had left and Sahil, IP and I began writing the songs. The approach was a little different than the last album, where the songs began with me playing a riff on the guitar and IP singing and writing lyrics on it.
This time, Sahil and I sat down on the drums and bass respectively and structured the whole song, then the guitars were laid down following which IP wrote the melody and the lyrics. The emotions are mostly of cosmic love and connecting to the beautiful world around us, which includes the trees, the stars, the skies, mountains, seas et al.
How have you challenged the existing genres of popular musicIJ
Our aim is to make each album sound different than the last one so that we can provide our listeners with something fresh and new every time. It prevents us from stagnating in thought and makes us keep exploring new ideas. Also, I feel popular music actually is one of those genres which has no boundaries unlike rock, jazz and metal. Popular music is a reflection of the current times and it will always keep changing since we humans, as a race, are always changing as we discover and learn new things.
Phir Se banks on ‘nostalgic ideas of the future’. Both nostalgia and future are contrary. What do you want to conveyIJ
It’s quite simple actually. ‘Nostalgic ideas of the future’ is what’s happening now. When we’re in the future, which is where we’re headed, we would be thinking about what is happening now in a state of nostalgia. And we all love being nostalgic (laughs).
Who are the artists you have collaborated withIJ
We’ve been friends with most of the musicians who are on the album for almost 6-7 years now (Suhail Yusuf Khan, Aditi Singh Sharma and Subhadra Kamath). We have chilled and hung out together. So, we decided, why not get into the studio and create some music!
How has been the journey so farIJ
It’s been rollercoaster-ish with lots of changes and ups and downs. But I feel we’ve learnt a lot from these experiences. Besides learning a lot musically, we’ve also become stronger as individuals and we’ve started to understand how to keep ourselves focused on what we need to do.
What are the forthcoming projectsIJ
We’ve already started working on the next album. Besides that, we would be releasing a music video Bijli from this album which would be airing on MTV Indies. We’re working on another music video, which has been shot and is getting edited. There’s also something quite big coming up which we can’t discuss right now as things are still getting finalised.