Drawn to the Beat

Don’t just pencil this in your memory; make a permanent mark.

“Music has been very big in my life,” architect and artist Anoop K Bhat whispers coyly while laying out his meticulously detailed pen-and-ink album art for Indian bands. For twelve years now, Anoop has created the visual language for headbangers like Bhayanak Maut, Parvaaz, aswekeepsearching, Djinn and Miskatonic, Cinema of Excess, and more.

Luru has popped into Anoop’s home studio on a drizzly afternoon to get behind the scenes of his latest commission for Thermal and A Quarter (TAAQ), the pioneers of Bangalore rock. He has been tasked with doing the artwork for the single “More Equal” from this nearly three-decade-old band’s still unnamed ninth album.

Sketchy past

Anoop grew up on a playlist that shuffled from “Modern Talking to Kishore Kumar and Pet Shop Boys to Jagjit Singh; it was everything my parents listened to.” It was in junior college that Anoop began leaning into the “heavier music” like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Linkin Park, and their ilk. In the beginning, he simply “wanted to be a part of this scene,” even joining guitar classes and starting a “little band” — but he soon realised he was “terrible,” and so he stopped. “But I’ve always been pretty good at drawing — since the age of four,” he says. “And so, I thought, why don’t I give this direction a shot?” he adds, as a way of staying in touch with “this scene.”

He’d already been going to concerts, befriending band members, and “vibing” with some of them. Through these encounters, Anoop developed a friendship with Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, the bassist for Djinn and Miskatonic — “one of my favourite bands. I was a big, big fan,” he coos. A true fanboy, he goes on to draw out the particularity of their sound. “They are a bass-and-drum band with grimy, heavy music — a wonderful sonic departure from traditional doom metal sounds,” he clarifies. Anoop found himself discussing “literature, movies, music, and all” with Jayaprakash. When Jayaprakash learned that he “was a decent drawer,” he asked Anoop, “Why don’t you make the poster for our next gig?” That’s how it all started.

A bold stroke

Today, Anoop hasn’t just created artworks for Indian acts; he has worked with Pakistani punk rockers Dead Bhuttos, Australian emo-screamo band Sail On! Sail On!, NYC-based Nepali metallic hardcore band Sangharsha, Canadian duo Nadja, Chinese post-punkers Fazi, and still counting.

But Luru’s nose for the local has got us investigating the process behind his pen-and-ink artwork for TAAQ’s latest single. “Being an architecture student surrounded by pens and ink, this style of line drawing seemed a natural choice for me,” he explains. “I’m also obsessive about things, and this translates into my fascination with intricate detailing,” he adds. His obsessive qualities also meant abandoning colour “because it was too many decisions.” Over time, he has come to understand that there is “so much that can be done with black and white; like so much depth to be shown, so many textures to be explored.” Even though he stays with just these two colours in each artwork, he is always “trying to do one new thing.” Another thing: Anoop “doesn’t use Photoshop brushes or drawing interventions.” While he does manipulate the scale of artworks on these digital tools, “all the textures, all the splatters, ink marks — each shape is hand-drawn, even the type is written out” to create varied components that make up his final artwork. This is “also a way of working myself into doing the work,” he tells us.

Painting a picture

With his artwork for TAAQ, he “got to be the artist, not [the] illustrator.” This is his favourite kind of commission; his joy is only spurred by “being a huge fan”. “They’re not just a band; they’re an institution,” he emphasises. And he thinks their logo “is the best logo of any Indian band.” The best part of this gig for him “is getting to listen to the scratch tracks and bounces — way before it comes out!”

When Anoop began to have conversations with the Bengaluru band in May this year, he immediately noted that their sound had shifted. “My work has always been associated with the heavier side of sound and music, and so the evolution of their Bangalore rock sound with a heavier element — and my style — found a meeting point,” he says. “They’ve taken 90s grunge into the fold of their Bangalore rock sound, the tones are gnarly, [the frontman] Bruce Lee Mani’s voice is angrier; it’s got a punk energy, but at the same time, it’s got their hooks and the signature stamp of their melody.”

For Anoop, “More Equal” is “a political, angry song that critiques institutions and the helplessness of being within uncaring systems.” Through his artwork, “a standoff between two wild dogs,” Anoop draws a parallel with the song through “the act of siblicide, a pattern common among wild dogs, hyenas, and cats where the limited access to resources compels the siblings to kill one or more of them for a larger share.”

The details: Check out more of Anoop’s pen-and-ink artworks here. Thermal and a Quarter’s latest single, “More Equal” from their ninth studio album, is available on all streaming platforms starting 31 October.