The visual world draws on Brutalism.
Coke Studio Nu.WAV has released its fourth track, ‘Shabnam’, a moody and emotionally layered collaboration featuring Maanu and Zoha Waseem.
The song was produced by Talal Qureshi and released as part of the platform’s ongoing inaugural edition of six planned releases.
‘Shabnam’ explores how two people can experience the same relationship in entirely different ways.
It expresses how neither perspective ever fully resolves the tension between them.
The track’s name, meaning morning dew, reflects its central metaphor of something fleeting and elusive that disappears before it can be grasped.
The song began as an unfinished collaboration between Talal Qureshi and Maanu before Zoha Waseem joined the project and gave it a crucial second perspective.
Maanu approaches the song through a lens of suspicion and unanswered questions.
Zoha offers her own contrasting and equally valid reading of the same relationship.
The exchange between their perspectives is deliberately unresolved.
This allows the song to sit in ambiguity rather than delivering any comfortable emotional conclusion.
The music video, directed by Fida Moin, extends that uncertainty into a surreal and unsettling domestic setting.
Everyday objects and familiar gestures take on exaggerated and distorted meanings as the video unfolds.
The boundaries between reality and imagination blur steadily as the visual narrative progresses toward a birthday gathering.
Talal Qureshi himself appears in the video as a DJ who arrives at the party only to find himself in a household consumed by suspicion.
The visual world draws on Brutalism and German Expressionism for its distinctive and deliberately unsettling aesthetic.
Production design and art direction by Tanya Mirza bring concrete structures, cool grey tones, and imposing interiors.
The result is a setting that feels recognisable enough to be familiar but uncomfortable enough to keep the viewer in a state of persistent unease.
Coke Studio Nu.WAV Executive Producer Kamal Khan spoke about the creative process behind ‘Shabnam.’
He noted that the tension between the characters was present from the very beginning of the project’s development.
Khan observed that the collaboration naturally evolved into two people telling different versions of the same story.
‘Shabnam’ brings together two artists with distinctly different musical backgrounds.
The contrast between their approaches gives the track much of its compelling tension.
The song was written by Maanu and Zoha Waseem and is co-produced by Maanu.
