Exclusive Premiere: Mumbai Electro-Pop Duo Cynefin Rush’s Moody Debut Single ‘Pieces In Place’

They might live within a five-minute radius of each other, but electronic pop duo Cynefin Rush (a Welsh word pronounced kuh-nev-in) kept the spark going to create their first set of songs remotely due to the pandemic. Producer Manov Bhowmick aka Maanov and composer-singer and producer Aruna Jade have now launched their debut song “Pieces In Place,” accompanied with a clever, humorous animated music video.

Formed in early 2021, Maanov was introduced to Aruna via a short course on advertising and music that they were enrolled in. Maanov says, “I sent her my demos and she liked it, so we ended up creating this project.” Sonically, “Pieces In Place” is situated in a lush yet flittering mood space, with the lyrics concerning itself with nuances around relationships. “It was like writing essays and reducing them to songs,” Aruna says of the songwriting process.

With Cynefin Rush, the duo delve into an electro-pop sound that neither member has fully taken on before as independent artists. Maanov has previously worked as a hip-hop beatsmith and enjoys nu-metal, while Aruna was vocalist extraordinaire of avant-garde project Serpents of Pakhangba and vocal group Aflatunes. Not exactly keen on picking influences, they namecheck artists like Mumbai’s electro-pop duo Nothing Anonymous as well as international acts like Oh Wonder and Sylvan Esso as the kind of music they enjoy. Aruna adds, “Our music is about evoking imagery… It gives you solace.”

“Pieces In Place” – with its video made by metalhead and animator/illustrator Varun Panchal – is the first off their debut album Fragments. The duo say they wrote plenty more material since early this year, but shelved a lot and kept seven songs. Maanov says, “They’ve sort of built up and become mirrors to different stages of a relationship.”

Watch the video for “Pieces In Place” below. Pre-save and pre-add the song here.