KCSU had the opportunity to chat with Peter Cat Recording Co. on their most recent tour of North America. The psychedelic disco jazz band hit the road with Khruangbin, playing venues throughout the country. Formed in New Delhi in 2010, the group creates eclectic groovy tunes. Their most recent release, Beta, lives up to their commitment to bringing their fans incredible music – but only every five years.
How’s tour going so far?
Just started, so far so good. We’ve done four shows, we are still in Berkeley. Our bus broke down.
To start it off, go ahead and introduce yourselves and tell us your favorite snack.
Karan Singh: Hi, my name is Karan. I play drums for the band. And my favorite snack…well, today I had a Philly cheesesteak.
Kartik Sundareshan: My name is Kartik and my favorite snack is jackfruit chips.
Rohit Gupta: Hi, my name is Rohit and my favorite snack is samosa.
Tell us what this album means to you.
The album’s been some sort of a development in our sound, you know, from the last album and there’s been a lot of new factors.
Kartik has written two songs, Dhruv has written a new song. So it has been kind of a development from the previous one – to go somewhere further and somewhere new with the sound and the songwriting.
We are all in different places in our lives and, you know, Karan got married, Karan had a baby. Kartik also got married during this time. It’s just trying to go further from where we were in the last album.
We have a bunch of songs that we’ve been working on and feel, you know, good about and then it just kind of comes together eventually. And it’s all dictated by life in general. So just moving forward with that, I guess.
That definitely comes across in the music – it’s an amazing album. What’s each of your favorite tracks on the new album?
Favorite track. That keeps on changing, you know. For me, it was Control Room till like a few weeks back. Now it’s Foolmuse.
If you ask this question again next week, it’s another track.
We don’t listen to our music once it’s done. We don’t want to listen to it, unless we’re playing it live.
We would love to hear a little bit about your guys’ music scene back in Delhi. What’s the music scene like back there?
It’s pretty vibrant, you know. It’s very varied, every genre is a scene in itself. Be it traditional music, hip-hop, metal. The Indian metal scene is very big…you’ll see a lot of musicians have stemmed out of the metal music scene. And now the indie scene is also picking up, the electronic scene is picking up. It’s very genre-based.
If Peter Cat Recording Co was a superhero group, what would your guys’ superpowers be?
[Dhruv] Bhola will have all the superpowers. He’s the special one, so he gets all of them.
What’s your favorite memory as a band?
I think the last favorite moment is when we were recording. That’s where I like to be. I like to be in the recording phase. Mostly during the recording sessions. Joshua Tree, or Pioneertown. We were in Pioneertown last year. We recorded there for two weeks. There’s this moment where we wrote a new song, it’s not on this album. But we already have a couple new songs and that one how we made it specifically – I remember that.
Should we expect to hear that in the near future?
Five years.
Well, my next question was how have your first few shows been – but it sounds like your bus broke down. Besides that, how’s Berkeley?
It’s beautiful. I went to the university for a nice walk and it’s nice. Even the crowd was great. We had a really good time. Super cool.
What tour date are you looking forward to the most?
I’m looking forward to Red Rocks.
Any other things you guys want to cover?
Come out to the shows.
Well, thank you guys. Best of luck on your bus.
Thank you!
To hear more from Peter Cat Recording Co., visit their website at pcrc.in or follow them on Instagram @petercatrecordingco.