Spring has sprung (unless, of course, you live in the southern hemisphere), which means a slightly giddy sensation in the head as we look forward to new love, sunny skies, hay fever and a long hot summer of continued global warming. But let’s not be downers. Rather, let’s kick back and enjoy some musical fantasies guaranteed to excite, move and amuse you. Here's the Sunday Sounds Spring Fever Playlist:
Peter Cat Recording Co.
Copulations
Speaking of new mohabbat and the rapidly beating dils, Delhi’s enigmatic genre (not to say gender) bending collective Peter Cat Recording Co, gets the show started with a laid-back ode to lovemaking. With atmospherics that tip the hat to both Leon Redbone and the Tijuana Brass, the PCs shuffle along at a sleepy pace, all the while daydreaming about you know what.
King Khan and the Shrines
Bite My Tongue
Arish Ahmad Khan of Montreal has been making fun, tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes scary music for many years. As a member and leader of a number of bands, including King Khan and the BBQ Show and The Spaceshits, this son of Indian immigrants made his early reputation as a punk musician in the dark vein of Los Angeles’ hardcore punks, Black Flag. Banned from playing in Montreal, as well as "run out of town" after an inflammatory Indian tour, his shows have tended towards the incendiary. He claims to have "matured" over the years but still loves to have a good time. In this hilarious clip, we are treated to a season-appropriate tableau in which the Saviour does battle with a potbellied superhero played by the King himself.
Basheer and the Pied Pipers
Margalla Winds
Karachi electro-band Basheer and the Pied Pipers take flight to the Pakistani capital and the Margalla Hills that run along its spine. Though the band likes to keep their music “simple and pretty”, this doesn’t mean they lack intensity or gravitas. This piece swirls and jitters as it builds – the winds getting stronger the higher you climb the hills. Salman Younous Khan’s drumming lays down a steady foundation for partner and guitarist Saad Munzar to propel the sound forward, creating a genuinely atmospheric track.
Auntie Flo
Highlife
Auntie Flo lives in a place called GlasGoa. Good luck trying to locate it on any map other than an imagined one. This young Scottish-Indo-African musician is credited with making a fresh type of club music that mixes international influences with electronica and has been receiving increasing exposure and critical praise with each passing year. He is a musician who finds his Goan heritage important on a personal but not necessarily professional level. Unlike many other diaspora desis, Auntie Flo rarely, if ever, dabbles in subcontinental sounds, claiming not to “have too much to do with India". African beats and influences are far more prominent, such as in this beat heavy track which takes its name from Ghana’s world famous dance music.
3 Mustaphas 3
Awara Hoon
This band arises out one of the weirder parts of the human heart. A true commune of suspected British but, in actuality, Balkan enthusiasts and eccentrics who love dressing up in fezes, singing in obscure languages and pumping out their utter love for every type of music from Kenyan Benga to Bollywood. Speaking of which, here is their dreamy-cinematic version of Raj Kapoor’s global golden oldie, Awara Hoon.
Clinton
People Power in the Disco Hour
We wind up this long weekend with a more recent but obscure classic from the minds that created Cornershop. Clinton was/is a side project of Tijender Singh, the great Punjabi-British genius of pop music whom few people have managed to pick up on. Although Clinton’s output – two albums – lived well below the surface of the pop mainstream, much of the band’s output was as masterful and creative and catchy as anything by Cornershop. This beautiful video is all the evidence you should need.
