Poetik Justis releases new album Kala Pani with immersive animated sci-fi film

It is a day of dropped calls when we finally get through to Vineet Nair The rapper who is best known by his alter ego Poetik Justis is the cofounder of B3 Battle Bars Bombay But the Mulund resident is now prepping for one of his biggest releases with the upcoming album Kala Pani The album release tomorrow will be accompanied by an animated short film mdash a first for Indian hip hop musicPanels illustrating moments from the short film for the album Kala Pani Pics CourtesyPoetikJustisIt began with the 2021 album Green Heart Astronaut admits Nair The album inspired by the lectures of scientists Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson that the rapper immersed himself during the pandemic came out with visuals that captured the 1990s animestyle Gundam we ask ldquoNot a big fan of Gundam but definitely love mecha animerdquo is his reply These visuals sparked the idea of creating a project that brings together a universe sonically and visuallyMonocolour worldldquoI had begun work on the concept around postcolonialism and how people are now imprisoned by the rule of their own people It took a backseat in the pandemic till I picked it up again to work in 2022 By then the world had changedrdquo he sharesSo 32yearold Nair spent six months reworking the lyrics and the soundscape with producer HHB Hip Hop Bhaiyya to complete the album With Artificial Intelligence AI raising new questions the approach changed ldquoI realised that we have been robbed of our ability to focus The danger of this slow fading attention is that everything is curated to fit into one patternrdquo he says This homogenisation is particularly restricting to artistes who never fit into societyA world without artistesThis is where the film of a world devoid of artistes took birth Nair had already begun exploring multiple art forms to express his ideas with Green Heart Astronaut 2021 ldquoI have always been a visual thinker If we had to talk about AI and the human condition we had to talk through the artists Thatrsquos where the story beganrdquo the lyricist revealsThe shortanimated film follows the journey of a rapper escaping a dystopian society ldquoIt is a world where the artistes have gone missing The government has appointed a team to bring them back into societyrdquo Nair shares Quite contextual in a world where artistes are increasingly hunted ldquoThat is because artistes see the inconsistency in society so clearly and refuse to accept itrdquo is his quick replyVineet NairWhile lyrics were the rapperrsquos domain the visual element required an expert hand The composer reached out to Bengalurubased illustration and animation studio Gum Blue and the Assambased StudioZeng to shape them It took a year and half of back and forth to finalise the visuals for the storyline The result mdash a bleak but captivating Blade RunnermeetsMaus creation The lack of visual stimulation was in keeping with the raw bars of the artistersquos lyricsVisual aidldquoKala Pani is about the forces that are trying to rule us The movie follows the narrative of a waiting gamerdquo shares Nair Understandably since the album itself took a good seven years for completion ldquoEvery artiste needs to have one project they put a decade into Not for the money or the fame Just to leave something that carries their markrdquo he signs off Now thatrsquos a barON September 11 8 pm onwardsAT antiSOCIAL Mathuradas Mill Compound Lower ParelLOG ON TO districtinEntry Rs 349 onwards