True Brew Records has been around for eight years, spearheaded by music producer Jamal Rahman. He’s been focused on audio work for a diverse set of artists ranging from Zeb and Haniya to Atif Aslam and Ali Sethi but allegedly there’s now a shift in focus.
MusicMix
True Brew Records is set to launch its video music streaming channel. The announcement was made at The Last Word with performances by Jimmy Khan and Ali Hamza.
True Brew Records has been around for eight years, spearheaded by music producer Jamal Rahman. He’s been focused on audio work for a diverse set of artists ranging from Zeb and Haniya to Atif Aslam and Ali Sethi but allegedly there’s now a shift in focus.
With an event at Lahore’s The Last Word he revealed that there’s a move towards doing more video content now and calling the project True Brew TV. Abdul-Rahman Malik, who runs a music blog called Mosiki, moderated the session where Jimmy Khan, Ali Hamza and Jamal Rahman spoke about the new venture and the music industry as a whole.
“There are a lot of brands supporting music now with Pepsi, Coke, Nescafe, and Cornetto included. However, they come in bursts during the year so sometimes we’ll have a lot of music and at other times we won’t,” Rahman shares. He wants to release a consistent amount of content throughout the year and is aiming for one video a week. “It’s like a TV channel where you tune in on the same day for your favourite show at the same time,” he smiles.
The plan is to do this in two ways, but each method of putting out music is true to the essence of True Brew. Their ‘singles’ will be a stripped down format with musicians in their element. “You can experience the intimacy with which a musician makes a song or plays it for their friends in a closed setting. It’s raw and visceral and I thought that was missing from our music industry,” says Rahman.
Jimmy Khan performed a new song called ‘Tich Button’ at the event which was in his usual groovy style.
Ali Hamza also performed a never heard before number adding, “For this event I was asked to sing with a guitar and have an original song - that’s when I got excited. The songs that I make on a guitar alone are completely different than what I would make with my band members.”
The second prong is live gigs which True Brew has been doing since 2012. “We call bands and have them perform as they are - that’s what’s missing in ‘branded’ music. It’s important to bring that energy online because we don’t have the kind of public spaces where we can reach so many people.”
The videos will be one take, in front of an audience so performers can feed off their energy. Rahman is of the opinion that putting out such content for consumption will give people the closest idea to what it felt like to be there for the performance. “This will build a culture of people expecting bands to perform live,” he says.
“As a musician, sometimes you don’t get to put out your music outside of your friends’ circle. How important is it to play outside of that space – for an audience?” Malik asked Khan and Hamza.
Hamza shared, “a song is born when it comes out and then the evolution begins. In fact, every time I play live, I want to change my songs around because I’m not bound by what was created when the song was born. That’s why live music is so important to me.”
Khan reiterated that he’s a musician because of live audiences; otherwise he feels he’s not much of a studio artist.
At the end of the day, True Brew hopes to put musicians out of their comfort zones so they’re pushed to create content. Whether it’s opening their songwriting and creation process up to millions on the internet or having them perform live with no option of re-recording, they want artists to get back to their drawing boards. “I think about those times in the mid 2000s when we were full to the brim with new music coming out - that was the golden age for music creation,” shares Rahman.
Naysayers criticize Rahman to say that he only works with indie bands but he explains that he wants to diversify with this development. “At True Brew expect our mainstays like Wooly and the Uke, Jimmy Khan but with others like Ali Hamza and Ali Sethi joining in. I also want to get Ali Azmat to come in and do an acoustic song because we haven’t heard him do that in so long.”
Taking it a step further, he also wants to introduce an educational leg to True Brew where they train musicians in the technical aspects of music.
