Since parting ways with Coke Studio after four seasons, music group Strings - featuring Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia - announced that they are celebrating 30 years together as a band by releasing a new record, aptly titled 30.
But keeping up with the times, the band, for the first time - without the help of a record label or a corporate bankrolling their album - has been releasing each track as a single, accompanied by a music video.
Starting with ‘Sajni,’ which was accompanied by a music video directed by Yasir Jaswal in March 2018, they have gone on to release seven songs so far; ‘Urr Jaoon’ (directed by Jami), ‘Piya Re’ (as part of Cornetto Pop Rock), ‘Mil Gaya’ (directed by Kamal Khan), ‘Hum Dono’ featuring Natasha Noorani (directed by Soheb Akhtar), ‘Chal Para’ (directed by Mohsin Kamal), ‘Naina’, a collaborative track with Sona Mohapatra (directed by Sohail Javed).
The band is also a part of Pepsi Battle of the Bands since last year and will once again take the judges’*chair this year.
Seven tracks later with one more song scheduled to release in 2019, the band is happy with the response they have been receiving on their new album, 30.
Speaking to Instep, Bilal Maqsood notes that they are neither interested in mimicking others nor it is their desire to do so.
“30 was a benchmark for Strings,” he says. “But we have to keep moving forward. There is a limit to which we can celebrate 30 years with 30.”
According to Bilal Maqsood, the idea is to keep moving forward as a band by continuing to make original music.
“31 has started so the next chapter begins,” Bilal says, before adding, “You can’t keep glorifying the past or you are finished.”
“We took one month or so, to make one song,” says Bilal Maqsood on how 30 was conceived.
As for response to 30 at concerts, notes Bilal, “We always change our songs when playing a show. We don’t play the album arrangement. If you come to our concerts now, ‘Sajni’ and ‘Urr Jaoon’ are big hits, bigger than ‘Anjaane’ or ‘Dhaani’. That’s the power of, I won’t say digital, but good music and it will find its audience. This is an audience that didn’t exist before in our fan-base. 18-20 years, for instance, for whom Strings was an old band who last made original music with ‘Main Tou Dekhoonga’, ‘Zinda’ and they were kids back then. We didn’t exist. But after this album, they make up our biggest audience, which is amazing and has given us a new life. And the stuff we’re creating post-30 is based on how the new audience reacts. We’ve done the college circuit. That’s our new audience.”
When asked how it isn’t easy to find new audience in Pakistan, Bilal notes that it makes the band feel both amazed and grateful.
In between releasing singles from 30, the band, embracing altruism, also lent support to the Special Olympics Pakistan and released a single called ‘Tum Aasmaan Ho,’ backed by a music video earlier this year.
Speaking about Strings, Bilal says, “We are a rock band, first and foremost. We have a certain image, which people associate with us and we can’t come out of it nor do we want to.”
When posed with the question why, Bilal responds on a parting note, “Because it has happened automatically.”
