Theajsound Drops Fusion-Pop Album ‘Rhythmic Remnants’

Theajsound aka Arjun Bhat has released his new album Rhythmic Remnants, which sees the Indian-origin, Auckland artist traverse between Hindi pop and Top 40-informed English tracks that draw from hip-hop.

The artist, best known for hits like “Beggin,” says, “I’m thrilled to share this new chapter in my musical journey. Rhythmic Remnants represents a fusion of my past experiences and future aspirations, resulting in a truly unique yet Indian pop sound.”

There’s plenty of loverboy charm exuded on the 11-track album which released in August, combining Hindi lyrics with playful pop arrangements that can sit right next to Indian pop mainstays like Armaan Malik, The Rish and more.

Theajsound teams up with artists like Anushansh and Tanmoyee Mitra on the upbeat “Jaane Kya Hua,” while pop artist Aizhaar is part of songs like “Tera Shehzada.” The late-night drive-friendly tune “Khubsurat” brings in hip-hop artist Zever. Elsewhere, rapper Devil The Rhymer lights up “Tu Kahaan 2.0.”

While one half of Rhythmic Remnants is broadly Hindi songs, the second half showcases his English pop songwriter side, with songs like “Slow Motion,” the club-friendly “Controlla” with rapper MC Culprit and the closing track “Blessing” with producer Cowboy Chayse and rapper Kwyze.

In a podcast interview for Unfiltered with Sandy and Ruzbeh, Theajsound spoke about his journey as an artist who’s trying to make the best of both worlds as an Indian and international artist. The founder of Alphabeat which describes itself as “music as a service (MaaS) company, Theajsound launched his career in 2020. “People feel if you’re not the next Weeknd or something that you’ve not made it and you’re not gonna make it. The world may not ever know you, but that’s a normal path. If I do this for 10 years, I’ll earn $200K a year. I’m still doing music and earning 200k, so that’s fine. This is where parents need to realize, it’s not so scary, it can be done,” he says in the podcast episode.

The artist admits music is “not paying all the bills” and he does jobs on the side. “But it [music] is paying. If I do this for five more years, my position will rise, my fanbase will rise and my money will rise. So it’s like a normal job,” Theajsound adds.

With the launch of the album, the artist also reflected back on the four-year journey so far, which included previous albums Pieces of the AJ Sound and Light It Up.(24 Blunts) (both in 2023) and his first record The Weekdays in 2021. He said in an Instagram post, “In 2020, when I launched my career as an artist, I didn’t know how to produce music or sing that well. I had less than 3k followers. I used to get 1-2 likes and barely any engagement on my posts, questions, polls. At the time I didn’t know that it wasn’t the marketing, that it was my skill level that was low and therefore the music and content wasn’t working. People told me to stop, that it wasn’t going to work.”

He adds, “Even so, I kept going. I made music for 10 hours a day outside of my full time job. I was patient and persistent I kept releasing music and making content.” Now earning for his audio engineer skills as well as songwriting and production gigs, Theajsound says he’s garnered over 25 million streams on Spotify. “I wouldn’t have got here if I had given up. So here’s a reminder for those of us working our asses off, good things are coming,” he adds.

Listen to ‘Rhythmic Remnants’ here.