MUSICMIX
In this concluding interview, creator and producer Jamal Rahman discusses the future of True Brew TV and the Lux Style Awards music nominations.
True Brew TV, an original music project featuring artists such as Moyo, Gentle Robot, Shorbanoor, Haroon Shahid, The D/A Method, Abdullah Siddiqui, Janoobi Khargosh, Ali Suhail and Jimmy Khan, has done for music what few productions can manage and that is giving room to ingenuity.
In this concluding interview with Instep, creator and producer Jamal Rahman discusses playing with Shorbanoor, several artists who have appeared on the music series and the evolution of the Lux Style Awards.
Instep: The prodigious Abdullah Siddiqui, who appeared on True Brew TV, has picked up a Lux Style Award nod in the Best Emerging Talent (in Music) category. Thoughts?
Jamal Rahman (JR): ‘Fiction’ is one of the tracks we released. There is a studio version of it as well that released previously. This one blew up on Reddit and got plays on YouTube and Facebook and on the radio. It was in time for the LSAs and they heard it and kind of picked it up as well.
Instep: Do you think these nods, particularly the LSAs, have value to the independent music community?
JR: I think the LSAs are doing a good thing in the sense that they have come away from looking just at solely at mainstream music. They’re looking at a lot of new artists and frankly any kind of recognition is a good thing. It’s not just about accolades. Just the fact that people will now be talking about these artists and they’ll be a conversation about them and people will possibly show interest and their music will spread, which is good. In this kind of saturated social media market if something gets plucked by a larger platform, there’s no negative there. I think it’s a good thing. Awards are a little shaky. Yes, it’s great for self-esteem and validation but honestly nobody is making music for awards. But it’s great to get a little validation and I don’t see any negative there at all. LSA is the only bonafide entity that does awards and in the last couple of years, their (music) selections have improved. The jury is more discerning and some of the categories and nominations are quite good now.
Instep: Let’s talk about some of the other artists who have appeared on the show. One of them is Haroon Shahid.
JR: He presented an old SYMT song called ‘Nazarein Milein’, which was on their first album.
Instep: SYMT stuff was good and a little bit outrageous, which is always nice. I was sad to know that the band broke up.
JR: Yeah, I wanted him to do a bit of a throwback to that time. They (SYMT) were doing some interesting things and had this post-rock sound.
Instep: You had The D/A Method who appeared on the show with ‘Darvaish’.
JR: They’ve put out two records. They’ve got some music videos out. Even though these guys are doing rock music and I have no issues with it. But like I said we just need to make room for other genres. But these guys do what they do really well, which is old-school progressive rock, you know seven minute long songs. It goes against how music is generally consumed online, where a song longer than 3 minutes is not heard or watched so they’re going against that grain and producing 10-minute long songs. I’m a big fan of their lead singer Usama (Siddiq); he’s got a great voice.
Instep: Shorbanoor is the solo project of Shehzad Noor. He’s been around for some time now and used to be a member of Poor Rich Boy. You’ve been playing with him. What’s the story?
JR: Shehzad was the principle songwriter for Poor Rich Boy and lead singer and that band disbanded quite publicly. After that, he went underground and I think he needed a break, had a kid and was doing his family thing for a while. Some years later, he was still performing as Shorbanoor but doing it as a solo thing. He recruited Sameer (Ahmed) and Fahad (Khan) to do a small show at the Last Word bookshop. He had a great experience doing that and came to me and said that he had new songs and wanted to work on them. I said yes and hopped on. The four of us actually sat down and composed around his compositions, made arrangements and put a set together. We played a show in January 2017 at True Brew and have been running this material. Some of the songs released are from that show. We’ve been trying to get more gigs so we played I Am Karachi Music Festival and Lahore Music Meet and are looking to do more shows. We also played Levis Live recently. I have always been a huge fan of his (Shehzad Noor) work so for me it’s like joining my favourite band.
Instep: So Shorbanoor has a line-up now. What comes next?
JR: We’re planning some stuff, looking to do music videos. Live at True Brew stuff will also get released and we want to be more active.
