The band is gearing up for their global tour starting in August. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The latest album from Peter Cat Recording Company Beta Its tracks have a similar theme. “Somehow these different ideas found a common expression in the songs. During the making of the album, as the songs were being written and tuned, themes kept emerging,” says Dhruv Bhola, bassist of the Delhi-based alternative rock band.
The themes range from philosophy of life to love stories and childhood memories to having children. The band members worked on a variety of topics. Even for the album’s title, they thought of several options, wrote them down on pieces of paper, put them in a hat and asked drummer Karan Singh’s six-month-old son to choose one of them. This is how it happened Beta It came up by chance.
The first single from the album, ‘People Never Change’, attempts to bring together diverse cultures and forms of music. With Bhangra beats running for over half a minute, it slowly descends into melody with Suryakant Sahni’s velvety crooning. Contrary to its name, this song ironically underwent the most changes. With multiple versions, it also took the longest to complete, as it was recorded over five years across three different continents.
The band’s new album is titled ‘Beta’. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
His quirky second album, Bismillah (2019) also took a long time to create. Often emerging from the expression of momentary thoughts and feelings, it changed and evolved like the people who wrote it, gathering and discarding ideas and themes along the way, until all the songs sat together and seemed to speak to each other. With frontman Suryakant getting married, a celebratory mood seeped into the music.
Since forming in 2009, Peter Cat Recording Company (PCRC) has been known for incorporating various influences into their music, such as psychedelic, jazz, alt-rock and more. Dhruv summed up the band’s musical inspirations as, “Many years of listening to and absorbing music, subconsciously recognizing the elements that make a particular piece of music special, experimenting in my own way, while also paying homage to older sounds and forms, trusting my instincts but also doubting them.”
PCRC is all set for one of the biggest tours by an Indian band. The 77-concert ‘Good Luck Beta 24’ will kick off in August, covering North America, Europe, the UK and India (December). The tour will see the band presenting new music after a gap of almost five years.
Beta’s launch coincided with the birth of the band’s drummer Karan Singh’s child. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
India’s programme
They will be performing at the Drome Arena in Pune on December 14 followed by the W Hotel in Goa on December 15. Mumbai will witness a spectacular performance of PCRC at the JVPD Grounds on December 20. On December 22, they will be performing in Delhi NCR, the birthplace of the band, at DLF Cyber ​​Hub in Gurugram. In the last leg of the India tour, the band will be giving memorable performances at Jayamahal Palace in Bengaluru on December 28 and at Roots in Kolkata on December 29.
