Kashmir's new song is hauntingly beautiful

‘Khwaab' is the band's most mature offering so far

KARACHI: Genres were introduced by record labels as a technique to stalk vinyls in music stores and journalists to write about something that can never be experienced through words. More than the music or the musicality of the song, genres represented an ideology, a struggle, a statement or a lifestyle that any musician wanted to sport or stand against.  This helped labels sell music and allowed bands to function like ideological umbrellas for audiences to gather under on a rainy day.

Internet and Spotify have reduced the gap between the producer and consumer to an extent that the genre does not matter anymore. What matters is the artist or the ‘statement’ he or she is trying to make for an audience that swaps through the timeline like shows on someone else’s Netflix subscription. Clinging on to the half burnt rope of Pakistani progressive rock, Kashmir has landed smoothly in the abyss that is Pakistan’s contemporary streaming culture. Khwaab, their first music video since they rose above the fizz, will raise similar questions. Why are they being called psychedelic? What’s so heavy and appealing about a band whose claim to fame is a pop track like Kaghaz Ka Jahaz? The answer is nothing.

PHOTO: PUBLICITY

Yet, it is the unique combination of ambient guitar tones, husky vocals and a bass line that holds you like a magnet which makes Khwaab grow on you like a bad dream. The keys provide just the right amount of space to think and feel the mood of the dream before you are woken by the horror of loud and surgically tangled distortions on the guitar. The song does justice to both its name and the band’s reputation of being in the middle of so many genres that the puritans tend to shrug them off as pretty boys with not so pretty skills.

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I’d have agreed had this been Buddha Baba or Soch but the band has travelled multiverses since Battle of the Bands and released a song as complete in style as it is in thought. But the moment you try and box this band in a genre you’ll miss the point of their music. Somewhere between the light of Entity Paradigm’s desi progressive metal and the shadow of Porcupine Tree stands Kashmir in no man’s land. Where Xulfi’s signature breaks and guitar overlays make it a song for intense, active listening, Bilal Ali’s timber and a very catchy hook will make it to the radio rush hour.

PHOTO: PUBLICITY

The video of Khwaab on the other hand makes their offering way darker and less self-reflective than the sound. Directed by Ashar Khalid, the band steps into a dystopian Pakistan, blindfolded and handcuffed, they are forced to perform in arena full of hungry souls. Some characters do look exceptionally frustrated, others a bit forced, but the overall mise en scène makes the story world more believable and less pretentious. The video is no Madmax, yet it manages to capture you on more than one occasion and that is the director and band’s biggest achievement. They have managed to instill a sense of fear and chaos through their creative expression; just when we needed to be reminded that what is happening around us, is no less than a chapter out of a dystopian novel.

Watch it here:


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