Bilal, the frontman, is carefully perched in the driving seat of his car moving at a steady speed. Owais, the lead guitarist, is sitting next to him. They are carrying their instruments with them — a guitar and an amp — and there’s a reason for it: they haven’t yet cut their first album, and they’re going back to the studio to work on it. But before they can resume work on the album, they have an interview scheduled with Icon. So, Bilal stops the car at the U-turn on the road opposite a fast food restaurant off Khayaban-i-Nishat in Defence, Karachi. He dials my number. I’m standing right in front of that restaurant and I can see them. As he spots me and ends the call, a motorbike kisses the front door of the car. He and Owais get off the vehicle. In most cases, a verbal spat or even a brawl might ensue. Not in this case. These members of the band Kashmir, the winner of the Pepsi Battle of the Bands (BOTB) contest, do not have rockstar hang-ups. Not at this point in time at least. They have a light but stern exchange of words with the motorbike rider, and that’s it.

 They get back in the car, swing round to where I am standing and ask me to follow them to their jamming space. I follow them like an obedient child. I can see a tiny, negligible indentation on the car door.

It’s a pretty small studio in a nondescript building. We step into it, greeted by loud but controlled drum beats. The band’s drummer, Shane Anthony, is already there. He looks at Bilal and Owais rather nonchalantly, and welcomes me with a gentle handshake. All of them come across as amiable characters. It all seems a bit strange. Not even their new-found fame and adulation coming their way seem to have had an effect on them.

They may be the hottest musical property around since they blasted their way recently to win the Pepsi Battle of the Bands but Kashmir remains ‘six socially awkward people who just like to make music’

Bilal Ali aka Lali has an answer. “We haven’t had the time to absorb it,” he tells me. “We are the same people making music.”

Making music also means writing lyrics to the songs. The last song that they played on BOTB was an original composition titled Kaghaz Ka Jahaz whose lyrics, apart from the melody, were thoroughly appreciated by the show’s four judges — Shahi Hasan, Meesha Shafi, Fawad Khan and Atif Aslam. Lali, who is Kashmir’s main songwriter aside from being its singer admits its been a difficult process. “I haven’t read that much of Urdu poetry,” he says. “I used to listen to English songs a lot and write in English. I listened to Urdu songs as well but never tried writing them. For the last four, five years [however], I’ve been trying [to write in Urdu]. What I do is, first I make a structure [of the song] and then if I find a word a little hard to understand but is complementing the melody, I try and look for its English synonym and then ask someone who is familiar with Urdu whether the word is being used with the same meaning that I want to convey.”

Prior to the finale of BOTB, there was a feeling that Kashmir’s rival band Badnaam had the scale of public voting tipped in its favour. It was Kaghaz Ka Jahaz that swayed the votes in Kashmir’s direction. In Owais’s opinion, if social media trends [after the show had ended and voting had begun] could be taken as a barometer, then the song did prove to be the clincher for them.

Prior to the finale of BOTB, there was a feeling that Kashmir’s rival band Badnaam had the scale of public voting tipped in its favour. There was even a bit of Karachi-Lahore rivalry going on because Badnaam is a Lahore-based group and the members of Kashmir are Karachi boys. It was Kaghaz Ka Jahaz that swayed the votes in Kashmir’s direction. In Owais’s opinion, if social media trends [after the show had ended and voting had begun] could be taken as a barometer, then the song did prove to be the clincher for them.

Prior to that though, another original composition by the young musicians, Buddha Baba, had the judges go gaga over them. 

“Buddha Baba is basically about the fear of darkness,” says Lali. “To keep it a little light, I brought in the story of my mother, who, when I was a child, would say to me that if I didn’t go to bed on time then the ‘Buddha Baba’ [an old man] would come and scare me.”

I turn my attention to Owais, known to his mates as Vais. Of all the six band members of Kashmir, Vais, with his long hair and a spring in his step, comes across as a clear-cut, head-banging rocker. In the audition round of the BOTB, he super-impressed Fawad Khan with his groovy riffs and astounding control over the guitar. Fawad paid Owais a compliment by likening him to Slash, lead guitarist for Guns ‘n’ Roses. I see a bit of Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in him. He smiles, perhaps thinking that’s the only axe-wielder I’m familiar with. “There was a time when I listened to Metallica, so in a way he [Hammett] is an inspiration,” he says in deferment to my opinion.

The answer leads to the obvious question about the band members’ musical influences. Watching them on the BOTB did not give a clear indication about who Kashmir had modeled itself on. There were songs in which Bilal’s vocal range and the band’s sound reminded listeners of Radiohead, and on other occasions of funk rock. Lali nods his head with a degree of satisfaction. “This is a good thing. All six of us — Owais, Shane, Zair [Zaki, rhythm guitarist], Usman [bassist], Ali [Raza, keyboardist] and me — we listen to different types of music.”

“Lali is into Coldplay, Sound Garden and Radiohead,” Vais pipes up. “I listen to instrumentals and individuals such as Marty Friedman … and also jazz fusions.”

Ali Raza, the keyboardist, who doesn’t turn up for the jam session and who I only meet during the photoshoot, would tell me later that his favourite musician is Hans Zimmer, renowned for his symphonic orchestrations for many a film score. I think it’s apt. I can imagine a Zimmerian orchestration of Led Zepellin’s immortal song Kashmir.

Shane weighs in. “My influences are mainly indie drummers and groove drummers. I really love Dennis Chambers. When we actually make our music, we put all our influences into one song. So we see a lot of different things coming through, like Bilal’s [Lali’s] vocals are very different from a typical Pakistani vocalist’s. That gives a different sort of feel as compared to bands currently working. Not to say they’re not good, it’s [Kashmir’s music] just different. All of our influences make our music what it is.”

Lali expands on the take. “We don’t fight when we compose but we argue a lot because everyone is entitled to their opinion. We learn from each other. Whatever intensifies the feel of the song, we go with it.”

To elucidate the process, they talk about the genesis of Kaghaz Ka Jahaz. It was Vais who had come up with the basic riff of the track. “We were jamming one day,” recalls Shane, “waiting for other band members to come, when Vais said he had made this riff ...”

Vais cuts off Shane telling him that it had happened earlier. “Me, Zair, Usman and Lali were just chitchatting, talking about life, a riff hit me, I said to Lali ‘listen to this’, and Lali, I kid you not, penned the lyrics on the spot,” he says. “Next day I came to Shane, he played a beat and everything happened spontaneously.”

At this point, Zair and Usman enter the studio. The bespectacled Usman comes across as the guy who likes getting into the nitty-gritty of things. He is what a novelist would call ‘loquacious.’ He describes how the six of them got together. “Basically Vais and I, and another guy [who he doesn’t name] started playing music together. Then we thought why not make a band. Ali who plays the keyboard is with me since Class I. When we did our first show, I called Ali. We had a different drummer at the time. Then came Zair on the rhythm guitar.” One thing led to another, others joined in, and the band came into being.

What about finding the right sound for Kashmir? “To date we don’t know what the sound of the band is,” admits Usman. “If you have seen BOTB, you would have noticed that all of our original compositions — Kaghaz Ka Jahaz, Soch, Faisley — are varied.” He does say, however, that Coldplay and Radiohead are common inspirations for all six of them.

I return to the issue of what fame has changed for the boys, quoting the immortal line from Spider Man, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Lali reiterates, “It hasn’t yet sunk in because we haven’t had the time to think about it. Whatever time we get, we use it for jamming. We use the following sentence for ourselves because it’s true: ‘We are six socially awkward people who just like to make music.’”

At what stage in the competition did they realise that they were on to something special? Lali talks about the ups and downs on BOTB which once caused him to have a sore throat. Zair, who appears to be more media savvy than the rest of them, endorses his fellow musician saying, “I also had a sore throat and I don’t even sing.”

The fact that Kashmir is deferential towards all the judges on the BOTB indicates their amiability. “The judges were spot-on,” says Usman. “You see, if you make a mistake on stage, you know it. You can’t cheat yourself. Not just that, the judges’ music sense was so sharp that they could identify the [musical] influences our songs had.”

I play the devil’s advocate, trying to turn them against the judges, let’s say Atif Aslam or Meesha Shafi, for passing vague comments such as ‘maza nahin aaya [I didn’t enjoy it]’. But Lali defends them. “Our music is atmospheric, which leaves very little margin for error. The slightest of mistakes would be caught. Also, the bar was set for us after we had done Mera Pyar [a brilliant cover of Aamir Zaki’s song].”

I try and come back to the point about musical unison. “Hamari aapas mein banti nahin hai musically [We don’t agree with one another on music],” quips Zair. When asked whether they point out each other’s mistakes while playing a song, they immediately say ‘yes’. According to Usman, Vais’s ability as a musician is double of his, but if he points out that the lead guitarist is not playing a certain lick right, he would generally agree. Vais concurs. “If Usman tells me that tapping is not working for a particular sequence, I will accept it because as musicians we know what’s coming off right or not.”

The band is not very keen on Bollywood music. They do, however, like Pakistani pop. Strings, EP, Noori are some of the bands they mention as the ones they grew up listening to.

Now that Kashmir is known countrywide — and I tell them I hope this will soon translate into worldwide recognition — their fan-base must have increased. I ask them if they have started to receive a big number of calls from female fans to which Usman unapologetically retorts, “Thank God for that!”

I walk out of the studio. Bilal’s car is parked on the road across the building. A motorcycle whizzes by, barely missing its door.

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 5th, 2017