Karachi We don’t hear from him much, but Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey – known as Danny P to some – has been an active part of Karachi’s music scene since 2001.
Instepinterview
From making beats to training actors (to become rock stars on the big screen) and Coke Studio, Instep traces the trajectory of Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey’s journey so far.
Karachi
We don’t hear from him much, but Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey – known as Danny P to some – has been an active part of Karachi’s music scene since 2001.
He started his music career with a famous Karachi metal band known as Messiah back in the day, but these days you can find him making and releasing new music and making beats as Alien Panda Jury – his electronic music project. Danny is also a part of Karachi’s first shoegaze – or rather, chappalgaze – band known as //orangenoise. But it has been a couple of years since the band played a live show because they have been busy with “responsible life things that people need to do”.
“It’s just a hiatus at the moment,” he says. While Danny and his //orangenoise band members have been playing with the idea of creating new material, it’s tough when your fellow musicians are spread around across the globe.
But all those cliché quotes and film dialogues about music is true, when the music is in you, you find ways to keep at it and Danny did that in some interesting ways. In seasons four and five of Coke Studio, Danny was the instruments manager who made sure that all the instruments were tuned and prepared before rehearsals and recordings. By season six, Danny was assistant audio engineer and handled the audio for all the ‘Behind the Scenes’ recordings. He also got to travel to Nepal as a recording engineer with the Coke Studio team that collaborated with some talent there.
“Well for one thing, it was a job at the end of the day and I wasn’t there to be a musician so it definitely wasn’t something I could use my creativity on like the other musical ventures I’m a part of,” Danny admitted. “However, I owe a lot to that experience in terms of the endless technical knowledge that I gained from it and am ever grateful.”
We recently witnessed a great deal of hoopla around this year’s first film release: Asim Raza’s Ho Mann Jahan. A film which is said to not be about music, but it revolves around the lives of some musicians. We see the actors play instruments and sing as though in an actual band and Danny played a vital role in that. This was one of his recent projects, training the actors in Ho Mann Jahaan how to hold and play their instruments like pro musicians. He worked extensively with Sheheryar Munawar and Adeel Hussain to teach them guitar and drums respectively. On set during the shoots for the film’s music scenes, Danny was there with them.
“The experience was quite interesting; it taught me loads of patience and the rewards that one reaps with said patience,” Danny explained.
With Sheheryar, Danny gave him basic guitar lessons and taught him the mechanics of how a guitar works, along with practice for the songs he was meant to perform in the film.
“Adeel, on the other hand I just sort of worked with on his posture and timing on the drums because he picked up the instrument quite naturally,” Danny added. “By the end of it he was banging out beats most seasoned drummers would find a bit challenging to pull off, the dedication he put towards his role to own the instrument like a professional was mind-boggling.”
Apart from these projects, Danny is currently working on a new Alien Panda Jury EP titled Enneagram. His first EP New Earth was released in 2011 but didn’t garner much of a response unlike his second album Sound, Science, Love. Danny has been working on putting together the upcoming EP since the past two years and plans to release it this year. Apart from Alien Panda Jury, Danny has also been rehearsing music with the D/A Method, a local progressive rock band. “I’m not going to give away too many details regarding that so keep a look out for it soon, it’s going to be insane!” he revealed.
Though Danny’s Alien Panda Jury isn’t officially part of the Forever South roster, he still plans to travel with the collective to release some material that they put together last summer for Soundcamp – a music residency held in Karachi in collaboration with the Goethe Institut. This event included artists from Maldives and Germany collaborating with local artists for two weeks, creating music together.
In Karachi’s music scene, on the one hand we have the label Forever South putting electronic music on the map, and then there is Lussun TV which made waves with their group of followers and fans with their Coke Studio-esque performance video web series of independent local bands. “I last worked with them during the drawing room sessions, helped out with the engineering and did some of the camera work which is always fun,” Danny said. “I’d love to be involved if it comes back to life again,” he added.
After these series of projects that have kept Danny involved in so many different aspects of the music scene in this city, he is set to perform as Alien Panda Jury tonight at the Arts Council, which is a big deal (because due to lack of opportunities we don’t see him play live that often). In that same gig Danny is also playing with a Canada-based musician Ashar Kazi and his band ‘The Mausikars’.
“It’s been almost two years since I’ve played bass at a gig with a band so it’s going to be loads of fun!”
