Faridkot’s second coming

The band started out in 2008 and gained recognition with their two albums Ek (2011) and Phir Se (2014) with their third album currently in production. “This time we are looking to take our music to a different direction. We have already written a single, which is going to be a far cry from all our other songs as it will be predominantly a dance track. Our first album was instinctive and the second album was progressive so making the third is a challenge, but we have taken it head on”, Rajarshi stated. The single, Barsaat is due out next month.

Every band has a unique story on how it comes up with its name and Faridkot is not different. “It’s a rather silly story (laughs). IP Singh ( the lead vocalist) called me up one day and told me that he was thinking of a name for the band. I said the name doesn’t matter. Whatever you come up with will do. He replied that he saw the name Faridkot printed on a t-shirt and he wanted to keep that name. I was fine with it. So here we are with the name Faridkot”, Rajarshi explained. On asked about what exactly is a confused pop genre in music, he remarked that they did not want to be confined to only one kind of music. With the confused pop genre, they could experiment with everything and had a larger playing field. “At the end of the day we wanted to make good music and did not want to decide on the genre. We wanted to make music that the audience would like and with pop music acting as a representative of the society we live in, we got a wide array of possibilities,” he answered.

Talking about the Expendables 3 experience, Rajarshi was understandably excited. “It was a lot of fun. When we got the call, we didn’t think too much. We just said yes. In any event, we were sitting in the studio and doing nothing (laughs). It was a dream job for us. To make the title track of a movie starring superstars who we had only seen on TV and idolized growing up, was one of the best moments of our lives.”

Phir Se, their second album got nominated for the Global Indian Music Academy Awards (GIMA) in the best rock album category. “We were on cloud nine. To get nominated with the likes of the Mekaal Hassan band was truly an honour. It was an amazing feeling which I cannot quite describe.” Rajarshi stated.

On asked if they still get nervous before going up on stage, Rajarshi said,” We still do but a lot less than before. Every live performance has a different audience and you are playing your own original songs in front of them, hoping that they like them. It’s a new kind of nervousness where we feel kind of excited too. In any event, we try not to think about it too much (grins).

Before signing off, Rajarshi had a message to all aspiring bands. “If you start out thinking that you will be huge, you probably won’t be able to make it. Keep making original music and keep rehearsing. For any kind of music, that is the challenge. If you persevere, you’ll go very far.”