The New Delhi rock veterans are sticking to the plan of targeting younger audiences through streaming and music festivals, with the release of recent songs ‘Life Is Certain’ and ‘Demons of Time’
During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, New Delhi’s rock veterans Parikrama – famously never known to have released music while extensively performing across the country for over three decades now – realized they had over 300 songs written. As of 2024, even with their latest singles “Demons of Time” and “Life Is Certain,” the tally of songs that have been officially recorded and released on streaming are a grand total of nine.
Keyboardist and founder Subir Malik recalls that the original plan all along was to embrace the rampant piracy that the likes of Metallica were up in arms against when file-sharing software Napster gained popularity. He says, “Piracy was a taboo subject and still is, but we had written boldly on our website, ‘We believe in piracy’ and then there was a little smaller font like terms and conditions, where it said, ‘…of our own music.’”
Even as songs like “But It Rained” made it to T.V. screens across India and the band was tapped to be part of projects like Channel [V]’s Jammin’ with legendary singer Usha Uthup on “Rhythm ‘n’ Blues,” bootleg CDs and tapes were circulated freely amongst Parikrama’s fans and even encouraged by the band. It’s how the music reached people in a pre-digital era, especially among college students who caught the band at their annual cultural festivals.
Speaking about college festivals, Malik says many of them stopped calling in the last decade, when Bollywood, EDM and now, even hip-hop got favored over the previously-established “rock night.” In the light of the dwindling demand in one sector, the band launched Parikrama and Friends as a way to put on a classic rock experience with guest artists like Suraj Jagan at corporate gigs. Even now, Malik is clear in saying that Parikrama is still a “hobby” for the last 33 years for everyone in the band. “That rule I think was probably one of the best decisions we made, because everybody was encouraged to start their own work from day one. Financially, everything was secure for everybody,” he says.
With all that in alignment, Parikrama have stepped in 2024 with the epiphany-driven song “Life Is Certain,” which is about one’s perception and how it can be widened. The band says in a statement that the song is about “our own inner voice guiding us with clarity of thought. It is a conversation with oneself at the end.”
Trading in their bootleg and piracy days for releases on streaming platforms, Parikrama are also releasing a live album on vinyl from their high-octane performance at Mahindra Independent Rock 2022 in Mumbai later this year. A 10-city tour is also in the works and festival sets are continuing through the coming weeks, including a headline set at Freeground Festival in Kochi on February 18th, followed by the Siang River Festival in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh on February 24th. Malik says, “By next year, the plan is to target Lollapalooza and Control ALT Delete and those kinds of festivals which are mainly younger kid-oriented.”
In tandem, they’ll keep the releases coming, with guitarist Abhishek Mittal stepping in after the passing of lead guitarist Sonam Sherpa in 2020. Malik usually plots out five-year plans for the band and in the present timeframe, he says the band will sift through hundreds of older material with an eye on putting out at least 50 songs in the span of five years. “We’re also releasing stuff from our old catalogue, like ‘Open Skies,’ which is a song people have been asking for 30 years. That’s the next project,” Malik says.