In a world where productivity is quantified, attention is commodified, and individuality is increasingly filtered through algorithms, the boundaries between corporate culture and dystopian fiction feel thinner than ever. Modern workplaces have normalized constant monitoring, performance analytics, and data-driven evaluation to such an extent that many employees scarcely question the systems shaping their daily lives.
It is precisely this uneasy reality that inspires Social Treble's latest release, "Crowded Silence." More than just a music video, it is a thought-provoking exploration of surveillance, compliance, and the gradual erosion of personal autonomy in a hyper-connected future. Combining an ambitious science-fiction narrative with a richly layered instrumental composition, the project invites audiences to reflect on where today's technological and corporate trends may ultimately lead.
We were lucky enough to get the man behind Social Treble to answer a few questions about life, music, and, of course, the decadent, shallow, and ruthless corporate world.
MBTM: You're from India. Could you tell me a little about your childhood?
ST: I grew up in a household where Indian Classical and old Bollywood film songs from before the 90s used to play on repeat. That was just the air in the house, you know? Quite a few of those old Bollywood songs had harmonica layers which I used to love listening to. So, imagine my excitement when my dad bought me a harmonica for my 6th birthday. As soon as I opened that gift box, I started playing it without any knowledge of how to compose or what makes sense musically. Just sounds. Pure, unfiltered, probably terrible sounds. Haha! But that instinct to pick something up and immediately try to create with it has never really left me.
I was also the kind of kid who would take things apart to understand how they worked. Not just instruments but machines, electronics, whatever I could get my hands on. That curiosity is still very much alive. It shaped everything I do today, both in my day job and in what I create as Social Treble. I think childhood does that to you, doesn't it? It sets up patterns that you only recognize much later when you look back.
MBTM: When did music first become a part of your life?
CT: Honestly, it was always there. It is hard to pinpoint a moment when music "became" a part of my life because it was playing in the house from before I can remember. But if you are asking when I became conscious that music was something I wanted to create and not just have playing in the background, then I would say it was when I discovered Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" at the age of 9. That was the first Western album I ever heard. And it completely broke something open in my head. Before that, music was something pleasant. After that album, music became something that could make you think, make you feel things you did not have words for, make you question the world around you. That one record rewired me. Every instrument I picked up after that, every project I have been a part of, traces back to that discovery. I was 9 years old and I did not fully understand what I was hearing. But I knew it was important. That feeling has
never gone away.
MBTM: You've worked in the corporate world. What was it about that experience that inspired "Crowded Silence"?
ST: See. I have to admit here that I have worked in Big Tech. Still work in the industry. So, I am an insider. And whatever concepts you see in the music videos or will see on Social Treble's channel comes from a Big Tech insider's perspective. I have lived the concepts myself.
The specific inspiration for "Crowded Silence" is something every corporate employee in 2026 knows but rarely talks about openly. Your keystrokes are logged. Your productivity is indexed. Your engagement is scored. Your cognitive output is extracted, repackaged and sold back to you as "company culture". You signed the contract. You probably did not read the clause that lets you leave. You probably do not even know it exists. Food for thought, isn't it?
That is not science fiction. That is Tuesday morning in a multinational corporation. I just dressed it in chrome and amber light and set it in Bengaluru 2031. The concept is about enduring corporate exploitation for a long time and then finding a way to escape. Not through rebellion or destruction but through meticulousness, intense research, absolute attention to detail and a very strong mind. Every policy, every compliance document and every law have multiple loopholes. History has told us that these loopholes have always been exploited by bad actors for dire purposes. But what about the good actors? Why can't they actually read through and understand everything to save themselves from exploitation? That is the core of "Crowded Silence".
MBTM: Why did you choose Bengaluru as the setting for "Crowded Silence"?
ST: Because I live here. It is as simple as that. But also because Bengaluru is a very specifickind of city. People outside India generally see it as the IT and Tech Hub of Ind ia. And it is. But there is another side to it as well. Because people from various cultures from various parts of India come to Bengaluru to work, the city has always had this blend of ideologies and cultures coexisting in one space. You could go to a pub where live prog rock is being played and then walk to the next lane and find someone playing jazz or Punjabi rap for that matter. The scene surprises me every time.
But what really made Bengaluru the right setting is the tension between the old and the new. You can walk from a street with century-old trees and parks like Cubbon Park and within minutes you are surrounded by glass towers running surveillance-grade infrastructure. That contrast is the entire visual thesis of the video. The dystopian rendering and the real park exist in the same geography. I did not need to imagine a fictional city. Bengaluru already is that city. The rendering was always sitting on top of something real. And that is why the final shot in the video works the way it does.
That being said, I will soon be moving back to my hometown, Kolkata. Why? Because I have escaped the system in every possible way, remember? The protagonist in Crowded silence is me after all.
MBTM: Social Treble is essentially a one-man project. Could you tell us a bit about the recording process behind the song?
ST: See. The recording process is entirely digital but driven by physical performance. I play two physical instruments. The Expressive MIDI Pro 2, which is a beast of a MIDI guitar,and the Nektar Impact LX61, which is a beast of a MIDI keyboard. These trigger virtual instruments, various guitar, bass and keyboard emulations, which I then mix and master using world-class plugins inside my DAW, Acoustica Mixcraft 10.6 Pro Studio. Everything you hear in those 224 seconds came from one room and one pair of hands.
For "Crowded Silence" specifically, the process was more like scoring a film than
recording a song. The track is composed with meticulous and methodical attention to detail. No verse, no chorus, no fade. Six acts, one continuous arc. I mapped the
narrative first and then composed the music to sync with the emotional aspects of the story. The binaural 3D mix at 48 kHz and 24-bit was built into the composition from the start. It is not something I added later. The bass is anchored centrally to give the listener a stable body in the soundstage while the mid and high frequencies spread spatially. As the protagonist desynchronises from the system, the spatial field gradually collapses inward. So, the binaural design and the narrative are actually the same structure.
Working alone is a creative choice, a philosophical stance and a practical reality for me. The stories I tell through the music and videos are extremely personal. Involving others might dilute the vision and the craft, which is something I cannot tolerate. I have built my skill set in such a way that I do not need to depend on others. And that is not arrogance. That is just efficiency. I have a taxing day job after all.
MBTM: What is your primary instrument?
ST: I am an engineer at heart, so the honest answer is that my primary instrument is
whatever lets me translate what is in my head into sound in the most efficient and
accurate way possible. But if you want a specific name, it is the guitar and the keyboard. The Expressive MIDI Pro 2 is the instrument I reach for first when I am composing. The Nektar Impact LX 61+ keyboard is used for layering all the other instrumental tracks and for the cinematic scoring elements.
But I should also say something here. I see music in an architectural way. I feel that the elements that form the full architecture can be customized in any way if it makes
melodic, rhythmic and narrative sense. So, the DAW itself is an instrument in the way I work. The mixing, the spatial design, the binaural engineering, these are not
afterthoughts. They are part of the composition itself. The primary instrument is really
the entire signal chain from the physical controller to the final master. Hope I'm making sense.
MBTM: What story does the music video aim to tell?
ST: The video is set in Bengaluru 2031. Every citizen has been rendered as a Persistent Cognitive Token. A living data-point whose attention, decisions and creative work are monetized in real-time by something called the SOMA Network. The gig economystopped renting time. It now occupies the body. There are no employees anymore. Only engaged tokens and silenced ones.
The protagonist, Token AS-1133, has been engaged for six years. The Network has been extracting his cognitive output to design more efficient extraction layers. He has literally been used to build the cage that holds him. One morning, he finds a clause buried in the contract nobody reads. A clause that permits voluntary exit if he can prove he has desynchronized from the surveillance mesh for 224 seconds. The Network wrote the clause. Never expected anyone to find it. Because finding it requires the exact kind of careful reading that the system is designed to suppress. He found it.
What follows is 224 seconds of a man walking through the most surveilled city on Earth generating zero readable signal. Not hiding. Not running. Walking. Carrying a small brass tuning fork, the only physical object in a world made of light. He does not fight the system. He does not burn anything down. He reads it more carefully than the system reads him, and the reading is the exit.
And then the final shot reveals that the dystopian city was the rendering all along.
Cubbon Park, a real park in Bengaluru, was beneath it the whole time. That is the most cinematic moment in the entire video for me. That final smile when the protagonist breaks away and finds himself standing in nature.
MBTM: What is your philosophy on life?
ST: I do not really have a grand philosophy. I am suspicious of grand philosophies actually. Haha! But I do have a few things I have learned from experience that I try to live by.
Self-reliance is a big one. I have built my skill set in such a way that I do not need to
depend on others to do my work. Be it in my day job or the work I do for Social Treble. Depending on others to execute your vision almost always leads to dilution of that vision. Most people who can build teams choose to. I work alone because I can and because it preserves the integrity of what I am trying to create.
The other one is this: “Read Everything” . Every policy, every contract, every term of
service. The people who write these documents are counting on you not reading them. Read them anyway. That knowledge is the only real leverage you have as an individual. And believe me or not, this has saved me more times than I can count.
And yes, I also do not believe in purism in anything. I am and have always been a relative synthesist who loves to connect dots and create things in the most efficient way possible. Could be art, could be software, could be anything really. Purism limits. Synthesis expands. That is the closest thing I have to a philosophy, I think.
MBTM: Who have been your biggest musical influences?
ST: Well, when it comes to inspirations for making music myself, I have always been
inclined towards Progressive Rock/Metal, Psychedelic Rock, IDM, Cinematic
Soundtracks and Industrial Rock/Metal. You will see all these influences in the music of Social Treble.
If I talk about specific artists, my go-to people would be Steven Wilson for
compositional style and overall sound, Mikael Akerfeldt for his guitar playing, Nick
Drake for instrumental tuning, Trent Reznor for industrial grit in music, Ray Manzarek for keyboard and piano playing, and Gustavo Santaolalla for cinematic scoring and sound design. The cinematic gravity of Vangelis is also a constant presence. And recently, I have been revisiting my passion for post-rock with artists like God Is An Astronaut, Distant Dream, Mogwai, Hammock, Caspian and Sigur Ros.
But if I had to name the deepest roots, there are three albums that changed my whole worldview and my life in the process at very different stages. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon" was the first Western album I discovered at the age of 9. Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" found me when I was a young adult studying in university. And Steven Wilson and Mikael Akerfeldt's "Storm Corrosion" arrived when I had started my career as a professional. Everything I create traces back to those three records in some way. They are the foundation.
MBTM: What's next for you?
ST: "Crowded Silence" is the second chapter in a three-part arc. The first chapter, "Skyline Motherboard… The Burden of Being Known", was the diagnosis of Algorithmic colonization. The gig economy occupying the body. "Crowded Silence" is the escape protocol. The third chapter, "Void in Time", is also out. It is the interior aftermath. The silence inside a person after the battle ends. Here’s the link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_sy6f_qUdk
I have also released a cover of the song “Nandemonaiya” by RADWIMPS which is from the renowned anime movie called Kimi No Na Wa (Your Name). The music video is also set in the same world as the other 3 tracks. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tlyI-ivo4
Beyond the music, Social Treble's YouTube channel will eventually have audio and video essays too. The music videos are establishing the channel's identity right now but the essays will go deeper into the concepts that the music touches on. That is the long game.
I am also in the process of building Srutio Media And Software, the company through
which all of Social Treble's work is released. It is a complete audio and video content
plus software company. This company is basically consolidating all the knowledge Ihave acquired for the last 23 years. You can already see the name in the credits on
YouTube and Bandcamp. Let's see where it goes. That's the whole fun, isn't it?
Listen here: "Crowded Silence"
Explore further:
Interview by staff at MBTM
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