The man behind the strange and beautiful sound – among other things – of Lahore’s indie-art music group Poor Rich Boy, Zain Ahsan, the multi-instrumentalist is quite the music producer; that too one coveted by other acts.
In addition to producing and mixing Poor Rich Boy’s much-awaited third album, Almost Tuesday, Zain Ahsan revealed to Instep that he’s producing Xarb’s debut EP that will contain five to six songs. “They are brand new songs; we’re starting things from scratch,” Zain told Instep.
He also revealed that he’s producing Jimmy Khan’s upcoming Punjabi EP that will release in a week or so. Zain also produced the brilliant Jimmy Khan song, ‘Madam’. There’s an Urdu Poor Rich Boy EP in the works as well and a single from it will be released in the coming weeks.
As for PRB’s third album, it won’t contain songs like ‘Thistle’ but songs that fit within the theme of the album. Though recorded at Mekaal Hasan’s studio, the upcoming PRB album is produced, mixed and engineered by Zain Ahsan. Given the songs we’ve heard so far, such as ‘Preacher’, ‘Almost Tuesday’ and ‘Cereal Killer’, it wouldn’t be out of bounds to say that it looks and sounds like their finest effort yet, both poetically and audio landscape-wise.
Xarb, in the meantime, can find joy in the fact that though they ultimately lost Pepsi Battle of the Bands 3 after landing as the top two acts – other being the winning band Bayaan – they have, in Zain Ahsan, found a musical genius.
