Kartik Pillai, Karan Singh and Dhruv Bhola are well-known names and are incredible artists in the Indian independent music circuit with each garnering plenty of accolades in their own right. Making up 3/5 the of the renowned band Peter Cat Recording Co. they’ve carved an impression on every indie music lover. As a trio, they are known as Begum.
Sonically placed somewhere between a subconscious revelation of internalized pop music tropes and a resolve to foment comfort by presenting the uncomfortable, Begum’s music treads a unique trajectory of retention.
Time and again, the band that has been in the works for almost a decade has said that what makes their alternative dreamscape band so unique is gut instinct. Whether it is in allowing both lyrics and sonics to spill out effortlessly or the unfiltered creative agency they practice and give to each member of the band. A decade later their music is more refined but it is that instinct that has been the clear differentiator for the band.
Their latest project is their album— Are you ok?, scheduled to come out on March 2022, five years in the making, Are you ok? will be their third full-length album. On Friday 17 December 2021, Delhi bred, and Goa-based band Begum released the second single and music video from the album titled— Only If You Care.
Thematically, the single explores the awareness of living in a chosen delusion. Of the track, the band says, ‘It’s about grandeur. It’s dramatic. Some of the meanings we will only really know when one hears it out of the blue and what effect that has. We, for one, feel it gave us a sense of space.’
The single is accompanied by a music video directed by Kartik Pillai that features footage filmed at the exact moment of time on 7 July 2021 by individuals in countries around the world. Talking about the video, Pillai shares, ‘When you were a kid, did you ever play a game where you’d try to imagine yourself in different points across the planet, experiencing the weather, time of day, street noise, if any? Places like Andorra, Buenos Aires, or Tokyo. Well, that’s what I was doing, trying to fully create a reality of these places as accurately as I could. Not only was it a fun game, but it also embedded in me this awareness of where I really was and that everywhere on the planet, millions of things were happening all at the same time. This video is a piece of that thought realised, if we could transfer the environment and smell/taste we would have loved to have done that as well.’
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