[music] — drēokt

PLATO’S CAVE [2022]

Music Composition, Creative Direction, Screenplay Writing, Photography and Campaign Design.

PLATO’S CAVE is the second audio-visual project under the trilogy by drēokt.
The project had been under development since 2012, with the first part of the three having come out in 2020.

The album debuted at #4 on the Top Albums chart in the Electronica category on Apple Music [India]
and climbed up to #1 after only four days of its release.

PLATO’S CAVE takes inspiration from multiple points and metaphors,
the leading sources being the allegory – Plato’s Cave, the birth and death of a volcano and personal experiences.
The album is meant to be experienced in a modular format – having the listener make a tracklist
that feels most personal to them for their interpretation of the album, rather than the standard form of A-Z narratives,
calling back to the concept of the allegory. The album shifts across conflicts dealing with the aftermath of being undone,
utopia and dystopia.

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“Audio-visual artist drēokt had been working on his 16-track ethereal album PLATO’S CAVE for 10 years.
Recently released, the record is built brick by brick as a soundtrack or a musical score for a movie.
The artist uses unorthodox soundscapes and his creative freedom to play around and manipulate the music
in a manner that makes it peaceful yet emotional.” - Rolling Stone

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To classify this project in a more traditional sense, the album is a score based and soundtrack oriented body of work.

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“drēokt is an independent audiovisual centric design studio that works with the creation of album artworks,
music composition, brand identity design, art direction and brand style guides.

Under drēokt, he has also been releasing his music projects for over a decade and has built a discography of ethereal music.
With unusual meter and a free-flowing rhythm, his compositions move beyond the templates of song structure into an experience.
His latest soundtrack-oriented album, Plato's Cave is yet another collection of such thematic soundscapes.
The artist classifies this album as a piece of 'sound fiction' that aims to break away from how music albums are generally perceived.

The 16-track album is a pretty conceptual depiction of experiences driven by narratives.
It feels like the artist is trying to stretch the definitive boundaries of music as well as its overall interpretation not unlike his previous projects.
The track names also play with the album's theme with Monomyth, Zeno's Paradox and Concatenate be acting as interludes of sorts.
There are also the almost threatening and ominous rhythms of Contretempts and the transcendental, uplifting strings of Obeisance.
Roseate just outright gives me a picture of a misty, enchanted forest.

All the tracks off Plato's Cave have a similar quality that make them a series of sensorial milestones in a non-linear journey.
The production embodies the same abstraction and eternal beauty that can be found in the artist's visual designs.
It's an album that stands out in terms of composition, theme and imagination and exists as a multi-dimensional,
musical version of a philosophical interpretive dance.” - Homegrown

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Stream PLATO’S CAVE Album

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The cover art was designed in collaboration with independent Graphic Designer - Utsav Verma.

We took the brief of the many abstract themes the album revolves around and built on the identity for it accordingly.
The idea to use the colour red stemmed from the initial artwork I had made in 2021.

I wanted to try different possibilities and explore other visual avenues,
experimenting further using DALL-E as an inspiration moodboard.

After having explored with several prompts and iterations, I felt stronger about the idea of using red
in the form of a character depicting the nature of the album as the project is very commanding sonically.
Following the same approach, I wanted to use a volcano as the driving element in different ways
for the artwork as it sums up the core narrative of the album.

After many concepts, I got Utsav onboard and we finished the artwork in its entirety,
building on the audiovisual world created for PLATO’S CAVE.

I wanted to push the limits of legible typography while it still tying to the identity of the album,
keeping it omnius and abstract as explored in my previous iterations.

Utsav and I both agreed on taking this idea further and going for a cleaner approach.
He resulted with an abstract type design that spells out the album’s name.

Alternate artwork for a special edition release on vinyl including four bonus tracks.

The final artwork created by Utsav and I used John Martin’s work as an inspiration and base
as it was one of the visuals I had in mind while composing the album.

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PLATO’S CAVE FILM

As one of the supporting collaterals, I took to making a film based on and for the album’s narrative.
The film reflects on three subjects - conflicted, divided and driven by their own ideologies.
Mirroring each other, yet worlds apart.

PLATO’S CAVE TEASER - Ungraded Rough Draft Cut

I worked on the film as a creative director, producer, screenplay writer,
photographer and composer, all the way to the final cut.

This film was an attempt at exploring narrative-building and storytelling through various avenues of communication,
binding them all together using the medium of film and audio.

The film was shot on 16mm with two different stocks of film and the stills were captured on a digital camera.

Created and Scored by drēokt.

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Thank you to my biggest supporters and team for helping develop this project over the years:
Aakash Lulla, Abhirami Suresh, Najiba Yasmin, Saish Rane and Utsav Verma

Patrons: Aakash Lulla, Aarti Bhalekar, Abhay Ranganath, Anushka Karmakar, Anvee Tawde, Arnav, Ashish Lavudha, Bhavya Shah, Diya Agarwal,
Gunjan Jaywani, Joe Donlan, Kunal Parekh, Omkar Khandagale, Parv Jain, Sainath Kallur, Saish Rane,
the Mehtas, Roys and Vibhakars, Sachin and Sonal Godbole, Sheetal and Yesheen Vibhakar

Team collaborators: Avinash Londhe, Ankur Tiwari, Chezan Lawyer, Digvijay Singh, Nikhil Pasalkar, Rohan Nair, Suraaj Nikumbh, Vedansh Tiwari, Samarang, Siddharth Kapoor, Savani Godbole, Ankita Bhise, Astha Kothadiya, Himanshu Phalke, Saloni Jhamvar, Janamejaya Daroz, Riddhi Goenka, Krishanu Bose, Jitendra Hande, Ahmed Ali, Ideal Cine Equipments, Bunty Salunkhe, Azar Patel, Ganesh Ovhal, Jitendra Sanse, Mahesh Kate, Rupesh Surve, Sanket Nirgudkar, Vishwanth Mule, Samiksha Vaidya, Palak Patel, Sanoja Jain, Aishwarya Kachalia, Saisha Shetty, Vandita Prakash, Saanchi Tejwani, Preeti Venkatesh, Sanjana Agarwal, Shraddha Narkhede, Jui Morgaokar, Asritha Chavali, Rhea Menon, Neel Chattarjee, Omkar Khandagale, Yash Nene, Yash Soni and Vrajesh Pithadiya