Nescafe Basement, a corporate music platform for the young and the fierce, is now in its fifth season with Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan spearheading the whole thing. But, for the first time, the show is looking and doing things that showcase real evolution and growth, both in terms of narratives, aesthetics and the sonic landscape via the songs presented this season.
In fact, the new season deserves a separate story but it’s the song, ‘Resistance’ by Abdullah Siddiqui whose appearance on a corporate platform deserves a standing ovation, without question. After its early years where Nescafe came off as a somewhat similar platform to Coke Studio, it has now found its own identity.
As for ‘Resistance’, from the audio-visual landscape to the electronic production of the song and its presentation with the presence of a band, it is a kind of contemporary, approachable electronic track that belongs on the Billboard charts. Its potential is universal.
To learn more, Instep spoke to Jamal Rahman, who is not only the co-producer of the song but is featured in the music video doing live things, and has worked with Abdullah Siddiqui before - on his non-corporate initiative, True Brew TV...
Instep: To me it seems as if Nescafe Basement has finally climbed out of Coke Studio’s long shadow.
Jamal Rahman (JR): I think everybody realised this year that it can’t be what Coke Studio did. You can’t just get away with doing substandard work.
Instep: Even the aesthetics have improved, particularly in ‘Resistance’.
JR: It looks very good this year, Nescafe Basement.
Instep: Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, aka, Xulfi, is spearheading it. How did you end up co-producing ‘Resistance’ by Abdullah Siddiqui on Nescafe, a corporate platform? We don’t see English songs on such platforms too often. We condemn people who do English music.
JR: Nescafe Basement has done some English songs but they have been covers. When Xulfi approached me to do ‘Resistance’, I was kind of shocked, even, that you want to do an English song and Abdullah Siddiqui is so talented.
Instep: I keep hearing this about him.
JR: He’s 18 years old and you haven’t heard some of his (unreleased) material, the kind of music he produces on his laptop. It’s out of this world. People like us, who have been working for decades, are startled that he’s so far ahead of us. Plus, he’s a singer-songwriter; he’s producing his own material, multi-talented and super intelligent.
Instep: ‘Resistance’ is electronic on the surface but the instrumentation, presentation and the presence of a band all lend it an inspired landscape. From the song to how it was re-done since Abdullah has another version of this song released before. This was something different.
JR: It’s actually really good of Xulfi to give space and bring another producer onboard and to be able to do stuff. The initial meeting we had, he said you guys are doing such great things with electronic and other genres as well and I really want you to take the lead on this. He really appreciated my work, I think, and gave me a lot of liberty to do with the song what I wanted and I discussed it with Abdullah. I took apart the song. He gave me all of his raw tracks and the work there was so well-put together that I didn’t want to stray too far away from what he had done but, at the same time, make a different version. The core elements are the same.
When you produce electronic, nothing is technically being played. It’s all been programmed on a laptop. How do you translate it into an instrument that can be played live?
All the sounds had to be sort of re-designed and put onto like, for example for the drums, we got a drum pad that had six pads, and each pad had its own sound like snare drum, kick drum and all those samples had to be transported to make it as if an instrument is being played live as opposed to running a loop in the background. So, all the instruments you hear in the background such as drum pads were played by Aron Daniel, Dhulara by Hasan Zafar and Ali Awan, Abdullah on vocals, myself on synth, keys and vocoder, Saad ul Hasan on synth, keys and backing vocals, Farhan Ali on bass guitar and backing vocals, and Shamsher Niaz Rana on synth and keys.
There are so many layers. How do you arrange it in a way that everything can be played? So, that was a challenge. We came up with sound effects and sang live. I must’ve spent three weeks coming up with rearranging the track and got the band together.