Australian music producer and sound artiste Victor Van Vugt is visiting India for the first time and finding the experience both overwhelming and rewarding. From the beachside setting of Varkala in Kerala to the valleys of Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh, the journey has already taken him across strikingly different landscapes. Currently based in Berlin, Van Vugt has spent more than four decades in the music industry. He is now designing the sound for the Malayalam film Tharkkam, marking his debut in Indian cinema.
A Career Built Across Continents
Van Vugt began his professional life in Australia, working with influential rock and alternative acts. His early credits include collaborations with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Triffids and The Go-Betweens. Over the years his work expanded to include artists such as PJ Harvey, Beth Orton, Depeche Mode and many others across rock, alternative and independent music. Several of the records he produced, engineered or mixed earned major recognition, among them the ARIA Award-winning duet “Where the Wild Roses Grow” by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue, and PJ Harvey’s Mercury Prize-winning album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
Despite a career that took him from Australia to London, New York and eventually Berlin, India remained unvisited until now. “In my 20s, when my friends were all travelling to India, I was busy touring with bands. Now, I am here and it is great,” he has said. The delayed arrival has given the current trip a particular intensity. The combination of Kerala’s coastal and cultural environments with the northeastern landscapes of Arunachal Pradesh has offered a rapid immersion into the country’s sonic and visual variety.
Entering Malayalam Cinema Through Friendship
Van Vugt’s involvement with Tharkkam began through a personal connection. Anup Kutty, one of the film’s producers, is a friend. When director and co-producer Sajin Baabu shared a rough draft of the project, Van Vugt recognised that the sound world would be entirely different from the European films he was accustomed to. The aesthetic alignment between director and sound designer proved decisive.
Tharkkam is set against the backdrop of the Kodungallur Bharani festival, an event known for its intensity and scale. Thousands of people gather; drums, bells, voices, music and the general density of a major festival create a dense and constantly shifting soundscape. For a sound designer trained in the relatively controlled environments of studio rock and alternative music, the challenge lies in capturing that density without losing clarity or emotional direction. Van Vugt has noted the abundance of sound at such a festival and the need to shape it into a coherent cinematic experience. He and the director found their ideas aligned on how to approach the material.
Building a New Sonic Aesthetic
European film sound often prioritises precision, spatial separation and a certain restraint. The sound world of a large Kerala festival operates on different principles: layered, overlapping, communal and frequently overwhelming. Van Vugt’s task is to honour that energy while ensuring the film’s narrative and emotional beats remain audible and affecting. The process requires both technical skill and cultural sensitivity—listening carefully to local textures, rhythms and intensities rather than imposing an external template.
The film also contains four songs. Tamil rapper Arivu and Malayali playback and folk singer Resmi Sateesh perform two of them. The presence of Arivu brings a contemporary, politically charged vocal style into the project, while Resmi Sateesh contributes a more rooted folk sensibility. Together with the festival sequences, these musical elements expand the sonic palette Van Vugt is shaping. Music composition for the film has been credited to Sayed Abbas in production notes, with Van Vugt focusing on the overall sound design and supervision.
Why the Collaboration Matters
Malayalam cinema has long been recognised for its attention to realism, location and atmosphere. Sound design plays a critical role in that tradition, often carrying as much narrative weight as image. Bringing in a producer with Van Vugt’s background introduces an outside ear that has spent decades refining the balance between raw performance and polished recording. At the same time, the project asks him to adapt to a cultural and acoustic environment far removed from the studios and stages of Europe and Australia.
The collaboration also reflects a broader pattern of cross-cultural exchange in Indian independent and regional cinema. Directors and producers increasingly seek collaborators who can bring technical expertise while remaining open to local textures. Van Vugt’s first visit to India and his immediate immersion in both coastal Kerala and the Northeast suggest a willingness to listen before intervening—an approach that may serve the film well.
From Touring Bands to Festival Crowds
There is a quiet symmetry in Van Vugt’s path. In his twenties he was on the road with bands while peers explored India. Decades later, the touring has given way to a different kind of travel, one centred on listening rather than performing. The sounds of the Kodungallur Bharani festival—drums, bells, overlapping voices and music—represent a living, communal acoustic world that stands in contrast to the controlled environments of studio production. Translating that world into cinema requires both respect for its chaos and the discipline to organise it.
Tharkkam, produced by Sajin Baabu and Anup Kutty, positions itself as a realistic thriller with strong social and ideological undercurrents. The festival setting is not merely decorative; it supplies the film with a dense sonic and visual environment that the sound design must navigate. Van Vugt’s contribution will help determine how audiences experience that density—whether as immersion, tension, celebration or all three at once.
A Debut Still in Progress
As Van Vugt continues his work on the film and his travels through India, the project remains a work in progress. What is already clear is the unusual nature of the meeting: a veteran of alternative and rock production encountering the layered soundscape of a major Kerala festival for the first time, and doing so in the service of a Malayalam narrative. The result is likely to be neither a simple transplantation of European techniques nor a purely local approach, but something shaped by the conversation between the two.
For Malayalam cinema, the collaboration adds an international credit to a film already drawing attention for its thematic ambitions and festival setting. For Van Vugt, it marks a late but purposeful first engagement with India—one that began with friendship, proceeded through a shared vision of sound, and is now unfolding across both the editing suite and the varied geographies of the country itself.
Read more – cricketscorerise.com