After delivering Juice earlier this year, Shamoon Ismail is back with a new song potentially from a new EP or as a single featuring a risqué pair of lips as artwork. Whatever the case, we’re glad to hear this audio release.

Produced by longtime collaborator Rovalio and mastered by MRKLE at Stardek, the song has created a sonic landscape that is partially a signature sound that Shamoon is beginning to develop as well as an elaborate one; it’s partially something newer and somewhat evocative. Mixing Punjabi with this electric music, Shamoon is consciously opening a new dimension, something he has been doing since ‘Tuntana’ days. His sound is now just crispier, sharper and cleaner in production value.

Providing context to the Punjabi lyrics that add colour and value to the song, Shamoon noted, “It’s for people who spread hate and lies, people who try to bring another person down using their influence without knowing who one is or what one does or how hard one works.”

Shamoon added, “It’s for people who have big egos, who think their opinion is the right opinion and anyone who doesn’t ascribe to it is wrong. From my point of view, it’s not for anyone in particular but for everyone who fits these categories.”

Mughal-e-Funk release superlative  video for ‘Akbar’

Mughal-e-Funk (MEF) is a super group because all of its members have made some remarkable achievements. Featuring Rakae Jamil (Sitar Nawaz), Kami Paul (drummer) Rufus Shehzad (Keyboards/synth) and Farhan Ali (bass player), MEF have crossed the Rubicon with their music video for ‘Akbar’.

Having dropped their fantastic debut album, Sultanat via Rearts Records in December 2018 after appearing on Coke Studio 11 with ‘Aurangzeb’, Mughal-e-Funk also contributed to Paanch – The Mixtape.

The song ‘Akbar’ is one of their strongest tracks because it also features the dynamic multi-instrumentalist Danish Khwaja. A sonically groovy single with hints of electronica perhaps, this genre-bending single creates a fierce, inviting universe.

Now ‘Akbar’ has a music video too and the treatment reminds you that it draws inspiration from the Mughal era, which is the same idea the band was formed on, while retaining a contemporary quality.

Speaking to Instep on Sunday, Rakae Jamil noted about the atypical music video: “The concept for the music video was given by its directors, Sadam Aqeel and Mohammad Omer Noor.”

Describing the visual identity of the song, Rakae added, “Absurdity and oblivion of power struggle, retrospective through the lens of The Great Mughal King (Akbar). The name of this Mughal king reminds us of secular society. He was the first Muslim king who was born on the Indus soil and a father who forced his son not to marry Anarkali, whose identity still remains a myth. For most of us, he was a liberal king but on the other side, he is also considered to be a conservative king as well.”

“In this video, we have tried to frame some of the essence of him and the connection between us,” Rakae Jamil continues, “Lahore as a city has played a very authentic character in the video because this city has the architectural traces of the Mughals. There are some patterns and drawings, which revolve timelessly and point to a decorative curl of wars in his time. To find the joy and tension of contemporary and Mughal era, the other characters were taken from different Mughal miniature paintings, distorting their identities and merging them with present time through moving images to create a new surface, in order to submerge reality and to turn it into a fictionally irrational story.”

The Mughal-e-Funk members within the video are artists who are time-travellers and have seen the greatness of the Mughals “through teleportation by their instruments.”