From classic rock to Premale, composer Sricharan Pakala is Tollywood's next big hit

One thing that we discovered before speaking to Sricharan Pakala is that he is one busy man. And why doesn’t that surprise us? After doing the background score for the Telugu thriller, PSV Garuda Vega, and the song Premale, we can imagine that the offers must be pouring in. And one thing that’s clear when we speak to the Vishakapatnam-born composer is that he’s just getting started.

It was Pakala’s brother who used to play the guitar and taught him a bit as well. But after that, he was on my own and before Kiss happened, Pakala used to compose background music for documentaries and short films

Pakala’s very first movie was Kiss, for which he composed three songs and the background score. But as it was a box office bomb, Pakala made his way back to Vizag, back to a life of chilling on Beach Road with his friends. Chatting with the 30-year-old composer, he takes us back to the time when he simply decided to pick up a guitar and start strumming.

Music was a hobby for me and it suddenly transformed into a profession 

Sricharan Pakala, music composer

Following that, for a decade, he played for different bands including his own band, Mephistopheles, that played heavy metal, and Echo, a band that used to be popular for classic and hard rock. When someone is this passionate about music, do you really think one flopped movie is going to keep him at bay? Though Kiss did not pan out as expected, his next movies like Kshanam and Guntur Talkies did well and things started looking up. “And then came PSV Garuda Vega,” he says, and with that, it seems like he arrived too.

The visuals at the beginning of PSV Garuda Vega, the Sitaphal Mandi scene, and the scene just before the intermission were tough to compose for because there was so much going on in the background, Pakala shares

All the reviews of PSV Garuda Vega not only noticed the background score but also praised it, calling it “alluring”. The story behind his entry into the movie goes something like this — the director, Praveen Sattaru called one night to tell him that he’s making a film and asked for a theme, “and I gave it to him the very next day,” he says. But looking at the massive visual scale of the movie, Pakala felt the need to do more. “I thought of going for an orchestral score, just like I did in Kshanam, but looking at the scale, I went for a blend of orchestral and hard rock,” he recollects.

Poster pick: The poster of PSV Garuda Vega

Pakala as a child used to listen to Ilaiyaraaja, AR Rahman, Mohammed Rafi, Jagjit Singh and more and believes that this is where his learning happened. “A lot of my learning was through listening,” he further explains. And though he is not formally trained, he remains technically strong and is obviously talented and hardworking — two traits that he lays a lot of emphasis on. “In this merit-based industry, you have to be on your toes every second. You have to constantly work hard,” he says and despite bringing up nepotism, he maintains that the competitive nature of the industry focuses on the deliverables alone.