They first came to some attention online when they covered Peer Mehar Ali Shah’s Punjabi kalaam Ajj Sik Mitraan Di for the caught-in-a-limbo film Zindagi Tamasha [The Circus of Life]. Now Saakin are back with another mellow yet beautiful number, Intebah.
Saakin is an Islamabad-based music act that has, over the last few years, developed a repertoire for doing hauntingly beautiful, spiritual music. “Saakin is Persian for ‘resident’,” band member Varqa Faraid told me once. “It also means steady or stationary.” But when taken in the context of music, saakin would refer to “the rests and silent parts in music, because music is a combination of sound and silence.”