Peter Cat Recording Co. - Bismillah

If discovering your favourite new band via a 'Best Of' feels a curious premise, then 'Bismillah' does more than hint towards the promise of Peter Cat Recording Co's future. Blending gypsy jazz, psychedelic cabaret, space disco, bossa supernova, Bollywood and uneasy listening with kaleidoscopic ease, in many senses, the band's knack hasn't altered. Always different, paradoxical, unpredictable yet somehow familiar. The new album opens to the strains of bird chatter, the whisper of a city's soundscape and the first few notes from an instrument which seem to be calling us to the departure lounge, a fore-shadow of the flight 'Bismillah' launches it's listener on. Suryakant sings with the detached, rueful elegance of Sinatra marooned on a desert island, whilst his band create small space-time capsules which navigate their way through genres and eras - including the future - and between nostalgia and eccentricity. A cat might have nine lives, but on 'Bismillah' and beyond, Peter Cat Recording Co. are hinting towards an un- knowable multitude of dimensions. Throw them all together, and it equates less to a listening experience and more to an out-of-body experience.

A stumbling but gracious collection of songs rooted in a kind of drunken soul music, the melancholy nature of some of the songs on ‘Bismillah’ renders them almost liquid, before they develop into more dance-like shapes.

Voice swoops from the falsetto glide of ‘I’m This’ to the beat-up baritone blown along by the warm breeze of ‘Soulless Friends’.

The elliptical structure of album opener ‘Where The Money Flows’ also allows for the use of brief bursts of autotune effect on his vocal without feeling incongruous, whilst the desultory lyrics of ‘Heera’ (a Hindi word for diamond)-have an emotional weight that would impress even coming from a native English speaker. Perhaps the most gleefully unpredictable moment on ‘Bismillah’ comes with the illusory, vocal loops on the intro to ‘Memory Box’, errupting into 8 exhilarating minutes worth of unbridled, string-backed disco joy. On ‘Bismillah’, PCRC are hinting towards an un-knowable multitude of dimensions. Throw them all together, and it equates less to a listening experience and more to an out-of-body experience.