Hyperpop and Futurism Paint Chrms’ Sophomore EP PILOT

It is innately refreshing to come across someone who actively attempts to visualize a city’s future. Not necessarily in a pragmatic sense, but rather something more abstract and cerebral. The intangible feel of an urban landscape; drawn out to know exactly which colors one would see, which trees would be around, and most importantly – what one would hear. This clarity in visualization is what a person would immediately take back when they hear Veer Kowli, aka Chrms’, 5-track EP PILOT.

When someone calls a city like Mumbai their home, they admit themselves to an appropriate dose of denial when they imagine it surviving any catastrophe. For Veer, this dose comes in the form of opposites and duality. Rolling Stone India asked the 21-year-old producer/DJ to elaborate on this. He said that this EP “encompass[es] the spirit of a series of moments [he] had been having; flashes almost (something like Deja-vu) but in this case, flashes of a time that hadn’t come yet, set somewhere in the distant future. Mumbai City in, say, 2070, seemed like where [his] head was at.”

That seems accurate. PILOT begins to lay the scaffolding for this imagery right out the gate with the synth-driven title track. The producer also uses this opportunity to debut his own vocals, which weave in and out of the layered bass loops. In an incredibly Kubrick-esque sense of familiarity, Chrms invites his listeners to dip their feet into his own interpretation of nostalgia.

Creating a “soundscape” is not as easy as most producers would have you believe. To harken back to iconic atmospheric soundscapes in popular culture, namely Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in The Sky or even David Fincher’s Se7en, it is truly the attention to detail that becomes the steepest hill to climb. PILOT manages to comfortably hike along this hill because Chrms understands how to use texture, evidenced by the cosmic and hypnotic track “SHARP”.

However, it isn’t just the music that lends to this atmosphere-building exercise. This project is a step in a new direction for Chrms in that he has collaborated with designer and visual artist Kushagra Gupta aka Kushlet to create the artwork for this record.

“I’ve always taken album art very seriously. This time around I was learning the ropes of 3D, scanning things I could find around me and running them through 3D software and messing about till I like the result. I’ve known Kushagra (Kushlet) for a while now, we’ve been online friends and working together on the visual identity for a label I started with my friend around the time when COVID hit. When I sent him this record to listen to, he absolutely loved it. Soon after, I spent days trying to get the perfect 3D scan of my face and worked further on it with Kush till we got what we were both happy with,” says Veer.

PILOT is Chrms’ sophomore EP (his previous being the 2019 release LOVER BOY) and will be released via UK-based label Hypercolour Records which will also be celebrating their 10-year anniversary this year. Moreover, this month is a milestone for the young producer, as it also marks his debut performance at Lollapalooza India 2024.

“I’ve been trying to find the best way to play it out to the audience in the way they can enjoy it the most. It’s going to be 45 minutes worth of unreleased music, with a lot of songs involving me doing the vocals live for the first time. I’m also super gassed to have my closest friends in music and life share the stage with me—Jordan Johnson, Rae Mulla, Sabu and Kayan. From the outfit to the order of appearances, working on every bit of the show has been super wholesome till now. It is being worked on as we speak and I hope to pull it off in the way it played out in my head initially,” he says with excitement.

PILOT releases on all platforms on January 26th, 2024.