Singled Out: Bourgeois Mystics' Jaan Pehechan Ho

08-16-2018

Bourgeois Mystics recently released a video for their version of "Jaan Pehechan Ho" and to celebrate we asked Squiggly Finesse (keys/vox) to tell us all about it. Here is the story:

I first discovered the song "Jaan Pehechan Ho" while watching Ghost World in theatres. The film opens with the musical number from Gumnaam (the 60s Bollywood version of Agatha Christie's ...And Then There Were None). The spastic dancing, cheerful expressions, and overall absurd & campy vibe left a lasting impression on my subconscious, and when YouTube came on the scene, I found myself frequently re-watching it. At the band's inception, as we were discovering our musical identity, we decided to throw this in the mix as our first cover, and it helped steer our direction toward the party funk weirdo rockers we are today.

When we started arranging the song, we knew we wanted it to be high energy and wacky and that any cover we'd undertake, we'd give its own flare to. The first thing we did, was turn the heat WAY up on the tune; playing the starting tempo at a whopping 240bpm and ending it around 260bpm. Our poor horn section. After playing it there for a year or so, we decided to pull it back to a more manageable 220bpm (still a good deal faster than the original). Next, we figured out how to spice up the basic form with some zaniness. We skewed the post-choruses, on a turn pickling a jazz lick, or at the case of the end of the song, an unexpected metal breakdown.

When it came to producing the song, we'd honed in the arrangement (after 3 years of playing it live), and knew we wanted to go hard with the 60's surfer vibe, but with a modern production style. We wanted the drums to hit hard and the iconic horn line to prevail in the mix. We always try and sprinkle in some quirky flare in all our mixes (here Beach Boys-esque backing vocals, tucked in electric piano following the horn line, some spacey synth sounds, quirky guitar sound effects, and a well-timed 8-bit drop). We are incredibly lucky to have Tonto Luigi, who not only rocks our world with his epic guitar playing, but records and mixes all of our music in his studio.

The power of singing in a different language, means that I can let the music speak for itself. "Jaan Pehechan Ho" in Hindi roughly translates to, "we should get to know one another", and I think its fitting that this a lot of our fans favorite tune and what really drew them into our sound.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself right here!