Shor Police’s Clinton Cerejo and Bianca Gomes on Working for Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Dobaaraa’

As far as cues for background music go, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap threw a creative curveball of sorts to composer duo Shor Police’s Clinton Cerejo and Bianca Gomes for the Taapsee Pannu starrer Dobaaraa. Cerejo mentioned in a prior interview that the director asked them to create an eight-minute piece that would simulate the feeling of being on a treadmill where they can no longer keep walking but cannot stop.  

Gomes says over a Zoom call, “It did sound challenging when we heard about it, because we needed to get into his [Kashyap’s] head and just figure out exactly what he was visualizing for the film and how the score was going to marry both.” Cerejo explains that they worked their way through several analog synth patches and plugins, plus his Arturia Minibrute. “We were experimenting one afternoon, we got this pulse that we kept going on and built the whole thing around it. We just kept slowly, every minute, opening the filter. You’re just propelling the audience subconsciously,” Cerejo adds.  

Shor Police – who have been releasing pop music as well as working in the commercial music space as background score and soundtrack composers – created the music to Dobaaraa and the futuristic, punchy electronic track “Dariya Hai.” The duo share soundtrack credits with composer Gaurav Chatterji and lyricist Hussain Haidry, plus the likes of Armaan Malik, rapper Fotty Seven and Neeti Mohan.  

Cerejo recalls he’d previously worked in Kashyap’s films Gulaal and No Smoking, but “kind of lost touch” after that. Producer Gaurav Bose enjoyed Shor Police’s music for Hindi thriller film Bob Biswas and wanted them to meet Kashyap. “He actually thought that our sound is very different from what I’ve been doing also in the past as a solo composer,” Cerejo says. He and Gomes met Kashyap in the midst of shooting for Dobaaraa at a hotel in Pune last year and immediately knew it would be “right in our zone.” Gomes adds, “He [Kashyap] always knew he what he wanted. We were given the general palette, but beyond that it was a blank canvas.”  

She says that while a lot of background score projects involve orchestral elements, Dobaaraa demanded more electronic music. It would be less formulaic, because it meant Shor Police didn’t have to go the traditional path of creating a “melodic theme” or building off a piano composition. Cerejo says, “As a composer, you begin to get used to that over the years. But here, I was trying to derive emotions from machines.”  

“Dariya Hai” serves as a song that culminates the thought process of Dobaaraa, albeit in a “bizarre way” as Cerejo terms it. “At that point – without any spoilers – the audience is like, ‘What just happened?’ That’s where the song comes in,” Gomes adds with a laugh.  

Handling projects like Dobaaraa and balancing their commercial music over the last couple of years has meant little time for Shor Police’s own songs. While there was a wide-reaching cover of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” with vocalist-composer Vishal Dadlani and rapper DIVINE in 2021, Shor Police’s last single was “We Took It All For Granted” in 2020. Gomes says, “We’ve been writing in the middle of all these songs, because you have to find time.” Stylistically, it helps that Shor Police say they’ve seen so much “indie music that’s beginning to sound more like film music and film music that’s beginning to sound more like indie music.” The duo say they like that they can “live on that line all the time.”  

Cerejo says half-jokingly that he’s “dragged” Gomes into the endless grind of working on scores, original music and commissioned work, even though he’s kind of used to it. However, Cerejo and Gomes are keen to pursue projects together as Shor Police. He adds, “We’re kind of not getting time now to breathe in a sense. There’s a lot in the pipeline. But we are going to announce some original stuff, which is pretty exciting.”