Exclusive Stream: The F16s’ Glimmering New Release ‘Triggerpunkte’

Vikram Yesudas, Abhinav Krishnaswamy, Harshan Radhakrishnan, Sashank Manohar and Josh Fernandez from the F16s.

When we last spoke to The F16s in September 2015, they were all set to release their debut album and were even near completing the video for the first single off the record. But an entire year on, and there was barely any sign of Triggerpunkte; the Chennai rockers even dropped off the gig radar earlier this year after they announced an indefinite hiatus from live shows. Says keyboardist Harshan Radhakrishnan of the year-long delay, “We changed mixing engineers, so it took a turn and went somewhere else. It was almost ready and went in another direction.”

Artwork for ‘Triggerpunkte’ by Bhatt // Bhatt.

It looks like it was worth the wait. The nine-track Triggerpunkte [German for “trigger points”] converts two years of road-tested and previously-unreleased material into Abbey Road Studios-mastered indie rock ecstasy. “Trying to find a place for these songs in the identity that we are in now was kind of hard,” says vocalist-guitarist Josh Fernandez. “Which is why it took so long to come to a place where we would be agreeable to release the music.”

And while The F16s brought out their inner [UK rockers] Arctic Monkeys fans on their previous EPs Nobody’s Gonna Wait [2014] and Kaleidoscope [2013], Triggerpunkte sees the five-member act moving towards ominous undertones [“much resembling the lives we live in Chennai and Bangalore,” laments Radhakrishnan] on songs like “Luna Zep” and “You Could Use Me As A Weapon”. Guitarist Abhinav Krishnaswamy’s shimmering guitar tones set against Fernandez’s moody vocal range — add to that an original sound that’s as big as some of the stages they’ve played in the past [Nagaland’s Hornbill Internation­al Music Festival and Rock Contest, India Bike Week and Magnetic Fields festival in 2014, to name a few]. Says Radhakrishnan, “Our music so far was more like a tribute to the bands we listened to. This album is way more F16s than any other artist we’ve been listening to, which is awesome, because we have our own sound.”

Listen to ‘Triggerpunkte’ below.