A bit longer form newsletter than usual — but quick updates first:
🌃Among the Stars is out now!
you special folks have already heard it (in the last newsletter) but if not, check it out HERE
🍒 next single & music video
the next song off the record, Temptation, is really special. we filmed a cinematic music video for it last summer, directed by the one and only Rishi Rajagopalan, and starring some very talented friends of mine. presave it here and wait after presaving to be redirected to a sneak preview of the video 👀
ok on to the longer post…
🔮 south asia, music, psychedelia
This song (and a lot of the album) came during a phase of heavy listening to old and new psychedelia and disco records. I grew up with a lot of Pink Floyd and Beatles records from my parents, who listened to these growing up in India.
It is such a common trope, the Indian aunty / uncle who love psychedelic rock, groovy disco, classic rock; it was always fascinating to me the relationship between India and these musical genres. Many bands of the 60s and 70s very publicly drew inspiration (and often appropriated) from South Asian culture, musical traditions, mysticism, religion, so it’s unsurprising how much they permeated the region. For more on this link between Western psychedelia and South Asia read this Barnard article about the WKCR radio show Shabash Bualadh Bos. Even now, the influence of the subcontinent persists (see: the sitar sound on Only If by Steve Lacy, or Mark Speer from Khruangbin talking about M.S. Subbalakshmi).
This is the musical tradition that I am part of, both as an Indian and a lover of rock and pop music and I hope to continue to do it justice 🤲🏽 For the moment, I wanted to share some of my favorite groovy music from South Asian artists old and new:
Memory Box by Peter Cat Recording Co., based out of Delhi and one of my favorite bands right now. The lead singer Suryakant Sawhney sounds like “Sinatra on two tabs of acid”, to quote Variety magazine. I was lucky enough to see them in Paris. They were phenomenal, but equally impressive were the (super)fans, who seemed to know every band member and every lyric.
Freak Out Music by RD Burman, the legendary Bollywood music director and one of the grooviest guys of the 70s. Coming from the film Heera Panna, this could just as easily be out of Blaxploitation soundtrack. I love when RD Burman & his contemporaries would draw inspiration from Western genres but then compose it as traditional South Asian film music. For more Bollywood psych outs like this, see this Pop Matters article.
Kathy Left 4 Kathmandu by Raveena, a personal favorite artist with wide musical range and an angelic voice (not biased just because Ramita is her choreographer). She openly cites Asha Puthli and 60s,70s Bollywood and psychedelia as some of her biggest influences, and it shows in the best way. I got to see her at Coachella 2022, where she paid direct homage to Bollywood by playing her rendition of Dum Maaro Dum.
Non Stop Calypso Instrumental Hits by Charanjit Singh - shoutout to my good friend Ankeet for putting me on to this casual legend, who unknowingly created acid house with his trippy freeform Hindustani synthesizer jams in his home studio in the 80s. Also played on several legendary Bollywood soundtracks (check out his list of credits).
Aap Jaisa Koi by Nazia Hassan, a Pakistani pop icon who, in her tragically short life, made some extremely ahead-of-their-time disco pop hits with her brother Zoheb. Like this groovy af track, featured in the 1980 film Qurbani starring Zeenat Aman. If you know you know.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this longer form post. Let me know if you want more stuff like this. Love and peace and Om Shanti to you all.