FuzzCulture Moves Towards A More Lyric-Based Approach on New EP ‘Strange Cities’

Straight after releasing his last album Escape to Where You’re Wanted in mid-2019, New Delhi/Mumbai electro-rocker FuzzCulture aka Arsh Sharma toured the record right until the pandemic hit. Since then, the vocalist-guitarist and producer began shaping a new sound and direction for FuzzCulture while also plunging himself into commercial projects and hosting a tutorial series online titled Music Production Hacks with FuzzCulture. Sharma says, “I wanted to make the songwriting a little warmer [of FuzzCulture], rather than just making production-based music.”

The musician’s fresh sound can now be heard on his new five-track EP titled Strange Cities. Sharma explains that the material on Escape to Where You’re Wanted was written over a bunch of years and feels more like a mixtape to him than an album. He says, “With Strange Cities, I wanted to thematically change the approach I took to writing FuzzCulture songs.” Sharma adds, “I wanted to try and focus on my lyrics a lot more. With the sound of the record, I really wanted to get away from the electronic music production that’s in trend and change it to a more universal sounding palette and experiment with that.”

Even with a new attitude to making music, Strange Cities does still retain FuzzCulture’s distinct sound and is filled with plenty of well put together guitar parts, analog synths, sax and trumpet sections, piano fills and even harp arrangements. “I tried my best to use a lot more organic and imperfect elements on the record,” says Sharma. The EP opens with the jittery “Nicotine” and is penned from the point of view of a toxic person while the drone-sounding yet melodic title track according to the artist is about “someone who’s detached himself from his surroundings and is seeing the world only as an observer.”

The EP then shifts to the spacey instrumental offering “Brief Encounters” before we’re thrown into the hyper electro induced “Starlight” which Sharma explains is a love story between an alien and a human being. The record closes with the bouncy and rhythmic “Mr. Murder.” “It’s the story of depression spoken from depression’s point of view to its victim explaining to its host why it needs to be there,” says Sharma. He adds, “I’ve added a lot of lyrical twists and turns to the record. Adding double and triple meanings to each song was something I really enjoyed doing in this EP.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, Sharma plans on releasing one more EP and is also in the midst of putting together a few collaborations. The musician also hopes to continue to keep his commercial work going, whether that’s producing, mixing or mastering. He says, “There’s a lot of music I have ready in the vault but I’m just trying to figure out what the best possible way of going about each of these releases is.”

Watch the video for “Nicotine” below and stream ‘Strange Cities’ on Apple Music exclusively till January 29th.