Peter Cat Recording Co.'s new album Climax pushes their musical style further by incorporating elements from new band member Kartik Pillai. Pillai brings influences from dream pop and experimental music that complement PCRC's jazz, cabaret, and Bollywood-inspired sound. The album contains diverse tracks featuring different instruments and styles, such as the use of trumpets in the opener "Clouds" or electronic influences in "Flies." While still retaining their signature nostalgic and old school sound, Climax is quirkier and more elaborate than their previous work.

1. music & Lyrics
Chest
90 August 2015 August 2015 91
Space jazz is now a thing. And Delhi-based band
Peter Cat Recording Co. celebrates it in all its glory
in their new album, Climax. If you’ve been following
the band, you must be familiar with their musical style,
which is heavily inspired by everything from cabaret
and waltz to techno and Bollywood.
With Climax, PCRC push the envelope just a little
more. The addition of Kartik Pillai, a talented musician
and multi-instrumentalist, sure gives the album a
creative edge. Pillai also plays with Begum, a lo-fi
experimental band based in Delhi, and his dream pop
and experimental elements complement PCRC’s musical
style. It helps that the various members of the band
have their own side projects because you can see these
diverse influences spilling into the songs. Like the use
of trumpets in eerie opener Clouds or the electronica
Artiste of the month>> Fuzzculture
Album review >> Climax by Peter Cat Recording Co.
Gig Calendar >>
Have you booked your
tickets yet?
NH7 Weekender, ‘the happiest music
festival,’ has announced its first phase
of tickets on sale, with its pre-sale
tickets sold out already. The festival
will be held in Delhi, Pune, Bangalore,
Kolkata and, for the first time, Shillong
between October 23 and December 6.
Head to insider.in for details.
On the topic of tickets, those
attending Ziro Festival of Music in Ziro,
Arunachal Pradesh from September 24
to 27 can avail of travel packages and
camping/accommodation packages by
booking online on http://zirofestival.
com/getting-there and http://
zirofestival.com/camping.
Headbangers alert
It’s been a good year for Mumbai-
based metal band Demonic
Resurrection. They won the Best Band
award at the Rolling Stone Metal
Awards (RSMA) early this year. In
addition, the band are set to take
their music across three countries this
month. The first week of August (5th-
8th) will see them play at the Brutal
Assault Festival in Czech Republic,
and on August 30, they head to Sri
Lanka to perform at the Maelstrom
Festival in Colombo. In the first week of
September, they are slated to perform
in Kathmandu, Nepal, as part of the
Metal For Nepal Festival. More power
to the band!
Trending Now >>
The Music Festival
(TMF)—Season 3 (http://
themusicfestival.in/), ft.
Motherjane, Agam, Indus
Creed, Lagori, Mad Orange
Fireworks, etc.
When August 1 to 14
Where Across multiple
venues in Chennai.
KRUNK Live featuring
Soulspace and Chabb
When August 8
Where Bonobo, Bandra
West, Mumbai.
D
elhi-based electro-rock duo FuzzCulture
have been around since 2012 and their
debut album, No, released in May this
year, has already garnered great reviews.
Winners of VIMA Asia Awards in the ‘Thank
You For Existing’ category in 2014, the band
comprising seasoned artistes Arsh Sharma and
Srijan Mahajan is one of the hottest acts in
the city at the moment. In conversation
with Arsh Sharma, guitarist/vocalist/producer
of Fuzzculture:
Considering you and Srijan Mahajan are
from different musical backgrounds, how
did the idea of putting your styles together
as part of FuzzCulture come about?
Srijan (percussionist) and I practically grew
up together and we’d been jamming since we
were 12-13 years old. We were busy with our
own projects later on. While I started playing
with The Circus, an alternative rock band,
Srijan was (and continues to be) part of acts
such as Parikrama and Half Step Down. We
teamed up after a long time and did a chill jam
a few years ago and that’s how we decided to
get back together and make music with just the
guitar and the vocals. I’d anyway been making
electronic music for close to 8-10 years, so we
incorporated the beats and turned electronic. It
seemed like a natural step.
What was the kind of music you grew up
on and how has performing with different
bands helped both of you as artistes?
The Circus has been a big part of my childhood
really. I’ve learnt a lot from the experience and
tried to apply it wherever possible. That said,
of course, Srijan and I have our differences; so
the grooviness in FuzzCulture comes from him
and the weirdness from me.
I was a hardcore metal guy and was into stuff
like Slayer, but most of my friends were into
grunge and pop. So at heart, I was a lonely
metal kid, but I eventually ended up being
influenced by a lot of grunge and pop as well.
Could you take us through your working
style and your plans for FuzzCulture?
I usually write the basic structure of our songs
and Srijan finishes them. We run a studio
together, and I’d initially done about 16 songs
that somehow shared a similar vibe, so we
decided to put them all together into an album.
That’s how No was conceived.
At the moment, we are touring extensively
and working at getting better slots at music
festivals, and hopefully performing abroad too.
We’ve already started collaborating with some
artistes and a new album might just pop up by
mid next year. So yes, we don’t have much of
a life.
You can track the band on
www.facebook.com/fuzzculture
Good to know
Line-up Arsh Sharma (The Circus), Srijan Mahajan
(Parikrama, Half Step Down)
Genre Electronica/rock
Influences Metal, grunge, pop
Where New Delhi
leanings in Flies. Elsewhere in Portrait Of A Time
and Copulations, the band sticks to the jazzy, old
school, nostalgia-drenched sound that has come
to define them over the last few years. Namonia,
a subtle reference to our prime minister perhaps,
brims with gypsy influences, and weirdly enough,
every time Sawnhey says Namonia, it sounds like
pneumonia. In Future Soul, a beautifully arranged
slow jam number, vocalist Suryakant Sawhney lets
his voice drawl and sigh in his typical world-weary
way. Climax is not a major deviation from the band’s
earlier album, Sinema. It is, however, quirkier, far
more intriguing and elaborate. While it’s not an
instantly likeable album or a sound that will appeal
to everyone, it certainly grows on you.
Download the album on www.pcrc.in/climax.
WordsHariniSriram