Working on his debut solo album, Between Flowers, was a way for OAFF to pull himself out of an existential crisis he was grappling with in 2024. After three major life events—losing two grandparents and getting married shortly afterwards—the composer and producer began second-guessing his entire career. “These big moments happened and it was a really confusing time,” says the artist, also known as Kabeer Kathpalia. “I was grieving but also celebrating, so I was feeling a little anchorless. I started asking myself: ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What is this all for?’” To find answers to these questions, Kathpalia carved out time to go “back to making music for myself”, he tells Apple Music. He had started out as an electronic musician in the mid-2010s before his big Bollywood breakthrough with the soundtrack for romantic drama Gehraiyaan (2022), which he created as one half of OAFF x Savera, the duo he formed with singer and composer Savera Mehta. But he was now ready for a change in direction. “I really needed to do something where I was not servicing a project or making something to a brief—something where I was just exploring,” Kathpalia says. He embarked on his quest by thinking about the music he remembered hearing in his grandparents’ home in Ahmedabad while growing up. The sounds ranged from Indian classical music to the minimalist works of American composer Philip Glass. “I thought: ‘Let me try to connect with the traditional music that I was always fascinated with,’” says Kathpalia. He subsequently enlisted classically trained singers including Amira Gill, Divyam Sodhi, Sid Sriram and Vidhya Gopal to determine “how to take such melodies and produce them in my own way”. The result is an album that occasionally recalls the works of Indian electro-fusion acts such as MIDIval Punditz and Karsh Kale, but with distinct sonic stylings that fall midway between the experimental electronic music of Kathpalia’s early days and the more commercially orientated sensibilities that have informed OAFF x Savera’s film and pop releases. “I don’t know if I answered the questions I had about meaning and purpose,” he notes, “but at least I’ve learned something about who I am and what I want to do.” Below, he takes Apple Music through the making of Between Flowers, track by track. “BAALMAA” “‘BAALMAA’ is based around ‘Lat Ulajhi’, a Hindustani classical music bandish [composition] written by the poet Chandra Sakhi. Divyam [Sodhi] and I were in the studio, and I asked him if he knew of a bandish or thumri [a semi-classical song form] that would work with this beat I had. He looked through his notebook, we tried a few and this one fit it really well. It’s in raga Bihag. The lyrics are playful—a woman is telling her beloved to untangle her hair because she has mehndi [temporary skin art] on her hands. I thought this was a good way to start the album because there’s a wedding angle to it. It’s also cool that a song that’s hundreds of years old has been juxtaposed with a modern KAYTRANADA-style house beat.” “bageecha” and “you are special” “There are two small interludes. The first, ‘bageecha’, is a voice note of my grandmother that my mother recorded when they were in her garden in Ahmedabad. After she passed away, the family were sharing photos and videos of her, and my mum sent this clip that she had. I just took the audio from that. She’s telling my mum that she’s feeling so much joy and happiness from seeing the flowers and the trees. The second interlude, ‘you are special’, is a voice recording that I sneakily took of my wife [before we were married]. She’s telling me about how I need to record these voice notes in the moment, during a real conversation, so it sounds special. When I told her I was including it in the album, she protested, saying: ‘Why are you using my voice?’ But whoever I’ve played it to feels emotional when they listen to it. And when I listen to it, I always smile.” “BETWEEN FLOWERS” “I made this track in 2016 but never released it. I had it in mind for the album but wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be an instrumental song. I sent it to Amira [Gill, to put down some vocals]. She was going through a break-up and her cousin, who happened to be at her house that day, wrote these lyrics about wanting to be free from all the things that are tying you down. It was her way of talking about Amira’s past relationship. I was at the hospital with my grandfather when I was working on it. I was already emotional and, when I heard the vocals, I was like, ‘I’m down for this, 100 per cent.’ I wanted it to feel like a bunch of aunties singing a folk song. Amira sang all the different parts by herself and made it sound like a group.” “FOREVER” “The whole album was done. I had six songs plus two interludes and I was just waiting to release it. But the marketing and all that seemed to be way harder than the music-making process. I was getting a little annoyed and, to calm myself down, I decided to make something for fun with this old sample of a sarangi that I found on my hard drive. I got Pratika Gopinath, who is part of Easy Wanderlings and who also performs with OAFF x Savera, to sing something over it. I felt it could be on the album, so I played it for a few people and everybody liked it.” “ROOTH GAYE” “Vidhya Gopal sings this version of a thumri popularised by vocalist Shobha Gurtu, in which a lover is saying to her partner that it’s been many evenings since she’s been calling him and he’s been angry and not returned. This song took the longest time to finish. The earlier version I had made was more dancey. It sounded nice, but the peppiness of the music and the sadness of the lyrics were not working together. At the last moment, I took it into a different zone. I added a small voice note in the beginning from actor Adarsh Gourav. I asked him to imagine that he’s talking to a partner who he’s going through something with. I think it gives the lyrics some context.” “KADRI” “[The origin of this track can be traced to] short videos I was making, for which I was taking classical pieces, chopping them up and using them as samples to produce music around. I made one with a piece by [Carnatic classical music saxophonist] Dr Kadri Gopalnath, which did well, so I decided to include it in the album. But I was in a tricky situation because he has passed away. I looked and looked and found his main disciple, Prashant Radhakrishnan, who lives in Los Angeles. He’s a great saxophonist himself so I got him to play the phrase I’d used—which he told me is in raga Hamsadhwani—and a solo as well. A lot of people sent messages to me saying they’re from Kadri, which is in Mangaluru, and to thank me for introducing people to the great master Kadri Gopalnath, who is perhaps not recognised as much as he should be. I’ve dedicated the song to him.” “FALLING” “Sid [Sriram] and I first started chatting about a potential collaboration on social media. I think we met once for lunch. Then I sent him a basic skeleton of this track and he sent me lots and lots of vocals and told me to do whatever I wanted with them. So I cut them up and made a collage of sorts. The song is called ‘FALLING’ because there’s a lyric that says, ‘Safer when you’re falling’. It’s about being in limbo and being comfortable in the fact that you’re going down and drowning in whatever. That contradiction gave it the feeling I was looking for. Because of all the grief that I was experiencing, I really connected with it. Sometimes not knowing makes you feel safer. The rest of the words are kind of abstract, with Carnatic classical phrases in the middle. ‘FALLING’ has got this darkness to it, I guess. The sound is a little edgier. There’s a little bit more grit to it.” “NEU” “Towards the end of the same studio session during which Divyam and I recorded ‘BAALMAA’, I said to him: ‘By the way, I have this one other track. Do you have any ideas for what would be cool?’ He sang this and I was like, ‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’ It’s our rendition of ‘Neun La Leya’, a poem by the 16th-century Sufi poet Shah Hussain about surrendering your heart to the divine or to your beloved. Initially, I’d intended this to be the first track on the album because it’s almost like an invocation of a prayer to do something beyond you. But after I finished ‘FALLING’, I felt it would be nice to leave the audience with a poem like this.”