Cocktail of sounds and rhythm

Peter Cat Recording Coeclectic, a multi-genre band offers its listeners a cocktail of different sounds, rhythms and beats. A quick chat with the band..

It’s not for nothing that Peter Cat Recording Co is swiftly rising up the popularity charts across the country. This eclectic, multi-genre band made up of a group of friends offers its listeners a cocktail of different sounds, rhythms and beats, thereby creating a huge fan following, that is as diverse as its musical profile. Best described as a gypsy jazz / cabaret band, the four-piece outfit is all set to wow Bengaluru audiences next Sunday.

“The four of us met in college. I don’t even want to mention the name of the college, as it was that horrible. Then, some of us dropped out and Suryakant (Sawhney), our lead singer and guitarist, moved to San Francisco. But years later, all the four of us met each other and Peter Cat Recording Co was born. Now the whole band lives between Delhi and San Francisco,” shares bassist Rohan Kulshreshtha, who is a self-confessed lover of ’gambling and Las Vegas’. Completing this quirky quartet is Kartik on guitars / organ / electronics and Karan Singh on drums.

“We make a good team and have a great time working together. The first time we ever played as a band was at a friend’s wedding reception. It was exciting to see our music being played at a turning point in someone’s life,” recalls 28-year-old Sawhney, who is known for his witty persona.

Growing up surrounded largely by Bollywood music, it’s understandable that the foursome’s musical influences are deeply entrenched in the ‘surs’ and ‘tals’ of songs that are as dramatic as the films in which they appeared. “Bollywood music is one of our biggest influences and we’re not afraid to admit it. But we also have a wide range of musicians from genres as varied as heavy metal, pop, jazz, disco and EDM, whose sounds we try to infuse into our numbers,” Kulshreshtha, 32, tells us.

Talking about their performance in the city, they reveal that their set includes a lot of numbers that have not been heard before and do not feature on the two albums (Sinema and Wall Of Want) that they have released so far. “Performing in Bengaluru is a completely different ball game, because people here actually know their music. And what we play resonates really well with Bengalureans, even more so than Delhi. I remember the first time we played there, the audience was actually requesting us to perform some of our other songs, that weren’t part of the set. We realised they’d heard them online. It was just great,” reveals Kulshreshtha.