Hits in a time machine: Ankith Gupta’s latest album is inspired by Stephen Hawking

The 27-track album features 51 artistes from across the globe

Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory may have been obsessed with Stephen Hawking, but he could not compose music for him. However, Chennai-based Ankith Gupta has done just that. And no, he is not a theoretical physicist.

The 18-year-old is a music composer and his latest album Time Machine takes inspiration from Stephen Hawking’s quantum science. “ Big Bang Theory introduced me to Stephen Hawking. When I read more about him and specifically about the Time Travellers Party, I knew I had to make it into music,” says Ankith.

In 2009, Hawking hosted a Time Travellers Party, for which he sent out the invites the day after. And as you know already, nobody showed up. In the documentary Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking he had said, "Copies of it (the invitation) will survive in one form or another for many thousands of years."

This inspired Ankith to take the concept and convert it into music. He listened to about 500 songs from the 1980s to 2021 to create his album. "I wanted the listeners to be able to travel back in time with music," adds Ankith. The album which released in August is distributed by music platform, Majja.

The album intro also features Stephen Hawking's speech about the party, set to music by Ankith and Malayalam rapper Deon. "This album is sort of my invite for a time travellers party," Ankith grins.

The 27-track album featuring 51 artistes from across the globe uses sampling which is the foundation of hip-hop. “I take an element from an already existing song to produce my song. In ‘Aaja Sanam’, originally sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey, I used one of the vocals from the main song for my track and in ‘Sowkiyamma Kanne’ from the movie Sangamam and my song ‘Kan’, I used the first 10 seconds of ‘Aapki Nazron Ne Samjha’ from Anpadh,” Ankith explains.

The Eureka moment for him however came in 2021 when he was travelling in his car and the song ‘Po Nee Po’ from 3 came on and a segment of it sparked the process for the album.