Three decades later, Ali Noor knows exactly what it was that set his heart to music all those years ago: connection. “Music begins where words end. Its experience in the head is the purest form of nonverbal communication, the ultimate emotional connection.” With Noori, music allowed Ali Noor to communicate the emotional responses he experienced to the world around
him, and the questions that arose as a result. The band’s songs urged listeners to look around, to break free of systems and assert themselves. With time, however, Ali Noor has found himself discovering layers to his artform, music becoming a vessel to explore the transcendence of human connection.

Pagal, Ali Noor’s first album since he parted ways from Noori, is exactly such an exploration, of our innate human ability to love and connect. In June 2020, as the world came to a standstill, Ali Noor and his wife, Mandana Zaidi, opened their home to the Pagal team. A motley crew of seven people, all artists in their own right, descended on the house in Bedian and, for 21 days lived and worked together as a family, all job roles and distinctions falling away. What has emerged is an album that stands as testament to what Ali Noor has come to believe profoundly: our collective journey has led us to a point that is asking us to identify as humans, simply and above all other distinctions, that are part of one global family. Pagal is proof of the magic that is created when we are able to do so.