New Kids on the Block

One of the most significant indie bands to emerge out of Delhi, Peter Cat Recording Co. on daring to be musicians

When Peter Cat Recording Co. (PCRC) started out two and a half years ago, the Delhi underground music scene mainly revolved around heavy metal, and a few electronic dance music acts. So it was no surprise that the audience at their first few shows in Delhi were awed by what they heard: a part-cabaret, part-folksy, part-jazz melancholic sound. They were well-orchestrated shows, which included animated projections and a lead singer who alternated between playing the keyboard and provoking the crowd. The sound, using the keyboard, drums, harmonium samples and a trumpet, was fresh and new. And, therefore, exciting.

Suryakant Sawhney, the lead singer and frontman for the band, had just returned from San Francisco, where he had been doing a course on film studies. He was irreverent, immensely talented and itching to make music. “I constantly have an urge to create or be part of a grand project and at that time, it was music,” he says. After school, while applying to foreign universities and waiting for scholarships to come through, he had joined a graphic designing course in Gurgaon and was introduced to Rohan Kulshreshtha through a friend. They jammed a little and then Sawhney was on his way abroad. “I thought I would catch up with him during summer breaks, but that didn’t really happen until I got back [for good]. And then, everything fell into place,” he says.

Kulshreshtha, who is also part of a heavy metal band called Lycanthropia, teamed up with Sawhney and PCRC was born. Sawhney says that he “spent a long [time] looking for a name, and then stumbled into a café [called Peter Cat] in Kolkata after a particularly weird day and realised the name fit the aesthetic of laid-back jazz”. He later found out that Japanese author Haruki Murakami, too, owned a jazz club by this name and was happy to know that “we both had the same idea of what it meant”.

Their first album, Sinema, released on 1 January 2011, has been steadily picking up on sales. The solo video for Sinema, titled The Love Demon, has over 7,000 views on YouTube, a remarkable feat considering that it was shot in a day with a little help from friends. The B-side of the album, titled The Wall of Want, which was released last year, too, seems to be enjoying moderate success.

It’s getting bigger for PCRC, which has performed at all major music festivals in the country, including Ragasthan and NH7. Sawhney says that it is this “average” success that has kept them going and given them the confidence to “chase their dream and quit pursuing anything other than music”.

They are tight-lipped about their next album, which they have been recording since they returned from a music festival in Challal, Himachal Pradesh, where their performance got rained out. Sinema, which was old school complete with a vintage photograph for the cover (in fact, a childhood photograph of Sawhney’s mother), was “all about the vintage look and feel of it… old tapes, older sounds, song writing, focus on the lyrics and the post-production of it”, Sawhney says. This time, he adds, “it’s purely spontaneous. It’s only when we get to the middle of it will we think about any thought progression we’d like to take”.

The band likes to tour often, regardless of the venue. While in the Northeast, they performed at a bamboo festival in Dimapur at the suggestion of a local. “It was a strange experience, performing in front of a crowd of 300 to 400 people, mainly uncle and aunties. The moment our first song got over, we saw a whole block, say about 150 people, get up and walk off. The younger lot loved it,” says Sawhney. Today they have played in each of the major cities in the country and are saving a repeat performance in Mumbai for a “grand” show later this year. The later part of the year will also see an album launch, which they claim will be a far cry from the drunken debauchery that followed the launch of their first album. “We did it at Rohan’s house in Bapa Nagar the first time around and invited a few friends. Those few friends turned out to be some 50 to 60 odd people. We were so drunk by the end of it, we performed everything but the album songs,” laughs Sawhney.

“While the rock star lifestyle may initially draw you to music, it’s not something that you can keep up with,” says Peter Cat’s drummer Karan Singh. “To live like a proper musician, people have this image of you being a total junkie. That can get physically taxing,” he says, sipping on a warm cup of tea to calm his sore throat. There was a time when PCRC’s image was marked by the bohemian lifestyles of its members and the unkempt look they endorsed. In the last two years, says Singh, a lot has changed. “We have to be more conscious. If we let the lifestyle get in the way, we make mistakes, we don’t coordinate well and we essentially fuck up.”

The past one year has also seen a new addition in their group, lead guitarist Kartik Pillai, who was also a sound engineer on some of their gigs in Chennai. He joined the band when a founding member, Andy, quit due to “ideological differences”. Singh says this is something that he still feels bad about. “A band is like a family; we can’t live with each other and can’t live without each other. Thankfully Kartik shares a lot of the same aesthetics as us. The first time we jammed, we knew it was going to work.”

Pillai, who studied audio engineering from Chennai, may be a new addition to the band, but has been involved with music for as long as he can remember. He also plays with an alternative band called Begum, whose music has Carnatic influences. Interestingly, the four Peter Cat musicians say that the freedom to explore their individual interests in music is what keeps them together. Sawhney, too, works with an electronic project Lifafa, just as Kulshreshtha and Singh are still involved with Lycanthropia. Between the four of them, they juggle genres from heavy metal to electronica to alternative to laid-back jazz. “Music is a release for all of us. It is our way of coping with life. To club it in genres would be unfair. We take back from everything that we experiment with and that eventually aids us with PCRC,” says Singh.

The band dynamics are pretty clear. Though the spotlight alternates between all the members, Sawhney is clearly the leader. That can perhaps be attributed to the fact that PCRC was his brainchild, that he is the song writer, and the fact that he is involved in most of the post-production work along with Pillai. “Me and Rohan are not good at it,” says Singh, who also gives drum classes on the side and takes up odd design gigs to make a quick buck. Kulshreshtha, too, does event programming and artist representation to get the money flowing, while Sawhney does a little bit of logo designing.

Aside from these, and their music, you will find them at their rooms in Hauz Khas Village, indifferent to anything around them, including the rare and occasional groupie. “We like to live a frugal existence. We can’t afford to go out. Our going out is only music, it takes care of our social needs and the organisers feed us well. For the rest of the time, we are just ideating… making music and figuring out ways to make extra money,” says Sawhney.

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Gunjeet Sra