Peter Cat Recording Co.

Bismillah (2019)

Bismillah gathers the band's crooning, swing and psychedelic pop into its fullest set, songs that sound like they were lifted from an old film and played back slightly too slow. "Floated By" rides a swaying, hazy groove under Sawhney's weary half-spoken croon, and became the band's most-played song. It endures as the record that carried an independent Delhi band to listeners around the world.

Sleeve notes

Peter Cat Recording Co.

Bismillah · 2019

Peter Cat Recording Co. is a Delhi band built around singer and guitarist Suryakant Sawhney, who formed it in 2009 after leaving film school. With drummer Rohan Kulshreshtha and a shifting set of friends it started out as a part-cabaret, part-folk, part-jazz outfit playing the capital's small venues, and became known across India for a sound that mixes hot-club swing, old Hindi film music, lounge crooning and psychedelic rock.

Sawhney sings in a low, deadpan croon and has named the Velvet Underground and Neutral Milk Hotel as formative, as much for their home-made spirit as their songs. Across Sinema (2011), Bismillah (2019) and Beta (2024) the band built an audience far beyond Delhi, touring Europe and the United States and becoming one of the best-known independent bands to come out of India.