A look back at some of most glorious indie music moments to have emerged in the last year
2016 may have been a challenging year for cinema, but as I’ve said before, musically speaking, it was full of celebratory moments. Having spent a considerable amount of time discussing mainstream artists in an earlier piece, we now move our undivided attention to the burgeoning indie music scene that remains remarkable, innovative and is brewing with exceptional musical narratives.
Our conversation begins with Forever South, an indie music collective that counts Karachi as home and has been filling up our senses with original, experimental, eclectic sounds for the past year with impressive regularity.
Elaborating just how significant 2016 has been, Forever South co-founder Haamid Rahim, who plays music under the moniker of Dynoman, told Instep: "2016 was an amazing year for FXS and I dub it the year of the singles. We didn’t release a single album on purpose. We decided to focus on singles and rolled them out via our "Hotcues" series. 2016 marks the end of FXS singles as looking forward we shall be releasing albums and exclusive EP’s. We may return to singles but not till at least 2018."
The Hotcues series brought with it a collection of 20 songs with each track accompanied by beautiful artwork. Unveiled on Patari this past year, the series featured a prolific line-up of exceptional artists such as Dynoman, Rudoh, Block - 2, TMPST, Toll Crane, Friedi, Smax and a few others. The tie-up with Patari is also significant and goes to show just how effective this platform has been in showcasing the diversified range of Pakistani music and in winning the trusts of artists as music listening habits shift towards streaming.
"Hotcues also saw great success. It’s an absolute pleasure to work with Patari, especially Ahmer Naqvi (Director of Content at Patari) who really cares for artists," Rahim told Instep. "If it wasn’t for Ahmer I would have been hesitant to sign to any distributor. We have been continually approached by international distributors but have repeatedly turned them down. Ahmer’s love for music and determination to see artists shine is one of the main reasons we are with Patari. Though we didn’t see too much of an uptick with the Hotcues series, it just solidifies that FXS is not for everyone, which we are okay with. In our own way, we are a community who is successful and doesn’t need large plays and things to validate that. We shall continue to work with Patari for years to come and add to the greater music community of Pakistan and beyond."
Another musical moment worth discussing is the Karachi Files gig that unveiled itself in the city by the sea last year. "Karachi Files was nothing but a success and a beautiful end to a lovely three-year journey," said Rahim about the project that started as a conversation and shaped up into something extraordinary. "What started out as a conversation between me, Andi and Hannes Teichmann in 2013 led to a series of collaborations between Forever South and their imprint Noland," explained Rahim. "It began with a gig in Karachi called "Futurama" in 2013 where the Brothers made their Karachi debut at a gig co-hosted by FXS. Shortly after they invited me to perform in Berlin at Worldtronics 2013 which was strongly attended by the FXS family. We continued our collaboration in 2014 and FXS hosted a Karachi Files pre party called Karachi Bound. We flew in Karachi Files member Arrtu Snellman from Berlin and Jambutek member Sunara from Srilanka and played a sold out show with 680 people in attendance at the Artists Commune. In 2015 the residency took place followed by the Berlin party that happened in the summer of 2016. This was followed by a sold out gig (1200+people) at the Arts Council between FXS and Goethe in November 2016, marking the end of a beautiful ride."
2016 was not a fluke or a one-off since this Forever South label has incredible plans for 2017, including releasing 2 LPs namely Collections Volume 4 and Songs for Lana by Dynoman as well as confirmed EPs by acts like Abdullah Siddiqui and TMPST.
Discussing Collections Volume 4 at length, Rahim explained that the album, which will be out by the time this story hits print, will feature artists such as Dynoman, Rudoh, Abdullah Siddiqui, Slowspin, Nawksh, Tollcrane, Smax, TMPST, Hatim Siddique, Block-2, Eridu, Friedi, Jofu and Al Ak and will deal in multiple genres such as ambient, post-dubstep, trap, electronica, beats, future, experimental, techno, and house music. Though Nawksh and Slowspin, two of indie music’s finest names and my absolute favourites are not actually in the FXS group, they are, as Rahim explained, releasing a track each with "our annual compilation for our record label imprint".
"This is by far our most comprehensive and emotional release yet," noted Rahim further. "We have had it fully mastered by a premiere mastering studio in Karachi called Box in a Box. Each song has gone through the mastering process and we hope to release this across all channels which comprise of YouTube, Bandcamp, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Patari, and more. Our release program is that we will first have it feature in a "soft launch" via The Fader and then proceed to roll it out across all platforms. There is also limited merchandise of CDs, tapes, and clothing available. This is also an emotional release for us because the artwork shall feature our new imprint logo which was made by Rahema Alam aka Butterflies and Cockroaches with Wings. The artwork is amazing and is done by Talha Asim Wynne.
We don’t have any public gigs planned for this release but we do intend on having a stream release launch at Box in a Box studio. The launch will be available to enjoy via a Facebook live stream.
We shall continue to strive to pioneer experimental electronic music in Pakistan and find like-minded people who would like to express themselves via this medium. Without fail FXS has released original music since 2012 and our current Collections Volume lineup personifies collaboration, like minded, ego-less people who are in it together. The beauty of the collections is that majority had collaborated to the Hotcues series and shows how we are all moving towards the same direction. We will keep on keeping on till then, just listen."