New Delhi: Long-distance relationships are often said to be doomed, but music composer duo Naren and Benedict have struck the right chord for 15 years. One is in Mumbai, the other in London, yet together they’ve scored some of India’s biggest films and series. They aren’t chasing Reel-ready hits but building tension, setting the mood, and pulling audiences deep into worlds from Paatal Lok and Kohrra to Heeramandi.
Oceans separate them, but their creative process is effortless. “I always joke that this is my longest relationship,” 38-year-old Naren Chandavarkar said with a laugh. The Mumbai-based guitarist doesn’t need constant back-and-forth with Benedict Taylor, a violist and violinist who lives in London. When they’re scoring a project, one lays down a structure, the other builds on it, and they keep exchanging versions until it clicks.
More than melody, their music is about mood. And their signature is on virtually every acclaimed OTT series and film. Every soundtrack is bespoke. The grand, swelling tabla and ghungroo in Heeramandi match the show’s opulence. In Paatal Lok Season 2, shot partly in the Northeast, the Naga string instrument taati adds a layer of authenticity. In the crime thriller Kohrra, ambient distortions of the violin create an uneasy atmosphere, the music creeping in like an unseen menace. Their latest venture, Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Background scores once meant the pulsating beat announcing a hero’s slo-mo entry. Now, they help define how audiences remember a show. The duo, who go by Naren & Benedict, are as much a part of the ensemble as the actors, their music burrowing into the fabric of the story.
They’re changing how the Indian entertainment industry treats music. It’s no longer just about big songs but the sound of the story itself. OTT shows have played a major part in this.
“With series, audiences now spend hours and hours with stories, and what stays with them is the soundtrack, the themes, the tunes. Hopefully, there will be a day in our films when soundtrack composers get as much credit as those who provide just a few songs,” said Sudip Sharma, showrunner and creator of Paatal Lok and Kohrra.
Their careers hit a new high with a Filmfare OTT nomination for Heeramandi for best background music (series). One of their biggest strengths is how distinct their sound is from Bollywood’s big productions. Their soundscapes are eclectic, experimental, and engineered for each script and scene.
When director and producer Abhishek Chaubey wanted a composer without the “typical Bollywood sensibility” for Udta Punjab (2016), he was pointed to Naren and Benedict. He gave them a rough cut to score, was thrilled with the result, and brought them back for Sonchiriya (2019).
“They can work across genres, be it big budget, middle of the road or even art house,” Chaubey said. “The biggest contribution to our industry has been they bring a new kind of approach to scoring, and their use of instrumentation, which is unique.”
Adapting comes easily to Taylor, who splits his time between continents. India isn’t just where much of his work is—his wife, actor Radhika Apte, also spends a lot of time in Mumbai. He makes both his long-distance relationships work. On baby duty during a video call, he held his child, towel and feeding bottle in hand, while talking about structuring travel around projects.
“Collaborating with a friend can open up the creative work you do, where you share responsibilities and can bounce off ideas,” Taylor said.
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When Naren met Benedict
The two musicians met in 2009, and it was no less than a meet-cute. Chandavarkar was studying for his bachelor’s in arts at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai, while Taylor was in the city teaching viola masterclasses at the Mehli Mehta Institute. A mutual friend, convinced they’d hit it off, introduced them.
“We had a lot of musical interests in common. I was working on a play at that time, and Benedict came into rehearsal one day to play improvised viola with the actors.” said Chandavarkar. The two bonded over their shared taste in music, jamming together at house parties across Mumbai.
At the time, Chandavarkar was already landing gigs composing music for Channel V shows like Lola Kutty. A turning point came when he composed the music for The Skeleton Woman, a play featuring Kalki Koechlin, who was then in a relationship with director Anurag Kashyap.
When Kashyap approached Chandavarkar for The Girl in Yellow Boots (2010)—a film about a young British woman searching for her Indian father—Chandavarkar knew exactly who he wanted to collaborate with. That film made their working partnership official.
And it didn’t matter that their musical backgrounds were worlds apart. Chandavarkar, raised in Bengaluru, grew up with Hindustani classical baithaks hosted by his grandmother and his parents’ Bollywood oldies. Taylor, from Kendal in northwest England, was a fan of Westerns and their music, especially the sweeping scores of Ennio Morricone in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America. But together, they found a sound that neither could have created alone.
Their long-distance process is intuitive. They create a project file and make direct additions and changes as they go along. There’s no real need for words.
“We do not really text or send voice notes a lot. We occasionally call, but we understand each other from working together, and this method works out pretty well,” Taylor said.
Unlike some famous composer duos who’ve had dramatic public fallouts—like Jatin-Lalit or Nadeem-Shravan—Chandavarkar and Taylor don’t see that happening to them.
“We never had a ‘formal’ conversation about our working relationship. It just panned out. We’ve worked from the same room and from different continents. Sometimes, distance brings fresh perspective and new experiments,” said Taylor, comparing their process to a sculptor chipping away at stone to reveal a form.
Individually, they have their own careers. Taylor has worked on theatrical productions at the Royal Court and played sessions for artists like Aphex Twin, Madness, and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Chandavarkar is also a sound designer, with his credits including the Marathi film The Disciple (2020). Another film Sabar Bonda (2025), which he also produced, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year.
This year, their work on Paatal Lok Season 2 stood out for how it expanded on the sonic landscape of the first season.
“We were looking at how the friendship between Hathiram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) and Ansari (Ishwak Singh) evolves from the previous season. We wanted it to have a special kind of musical identity,” Chandavarkar said.
The score shifts as their bond develops, building up until tragedy strikes. The shift in setting, as the characters travel to Nagaland, is also immediately reflected in the music.
“There was some folk music that Sudip and Avinash had heard before that we also incorporated into the score,” Chandavarkar said.
By strategically weaving local musical influences into the narrative, they reinforce the cultural context of the story.
When sniper Daniel Acho (Prashant Tamang) stalks a victim with earphones blasting Aladin by Naga rapper Moko Koza, the hip-hop beats peak as he fires, melding cultural relevance with mounting tension.
In a similar vein, Season 1 featured Toofan Main, a desi hip-hop cut by Prabh Deep, which became synonymous with the entrance of Hathoda Tyagi (Abhishek Banerjee). For Season 2, they worked with a trumpet player from Spain, a brass band from Mumbai, and a saxophonist.
“Naren and Benedict are always keen on bringing in local instruments and sounds from the region in which the production is set,” said Sudip Sharma. “In Paatal Lok 2, they combined taati with their usual sound and managed to come up with some stirring music. There is this desire to embrace the regionality of the sound, which goes very well with what I try to do with my stories.”
Breaking sound barriers
Chandavarkar and Taylor are accomplished musicians in their own right, but things can get wacky when they work as Naren & Benedict. They stretch, bend, and twist familiar sounds of acoustic instruments into unexpected shapes.
Taylor warps strings and voice, layering them with electronics, homemade instruments, and everyday objects. Chandavarkar once stuffed wool into a piano for Ship of Theseus and wedged cardboard into guitar strings for Newton. Their music is full of echoes, reverbs, and eerie hybrids that build a distinct atmosphere for each film.
“We put bits of cardboard in between guitar strings for Newton’s score, and in Udta Punjab, we treated them electronically. We’ve also mixed the sound of one instrument with another and created something almost new entirely,” Taylor said.
The brooding background score complements the bleak mood of Kohrra, where relationships are complicated and physical violence lurks around the corner. For this crime series, they layered everyday noises—truck horns, mobile phone static, clanging metal, drones—with violin strains to build an unsettling tension.
With Udta Punjab, another gritty take on Punjab, they took a different route, employing electronic beats and distortion to capture the chaos of the drug trade. They used a prepared piano technique—placing bits of wool around the strings—to create a reverberating drone effect.
“My favourite bit is when Alia Bhatt’s character is underwater,” said director Abhishek Chaubey. The same piano effect was used in that moment, amplifying a sense of dissociation.
For Heeramandi, the duo explored a fusion of Indian and Western classical music, blending sitar, tabla, and violin to match Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s signature grandeur. Whether it was the turbulent romance of Taj and Alamgir or Bibbojaan’s rebellion, the score added momentum to the drama.
Their music is also about nailing the emotional timbre.
That was crucial in Trial by Fire. Based on a true story, it follows two parents fighting for justice after losing their children in the Uphaar Cinema fire.
“We wanted to be careful that music was going to set that emotional landscape. We did not want the grief to invoke a sense of pity or wallowing,” said Taylor.
Chandavarkar was involved in the project from the script development stage and had a clear sense of how the show’s atmosphere would take shape. In a rare instance for a series, the composers worked closely with the sound design team to complement each other’s work. Even the cinematography’s colour palette evolved as the story spanned nearly two decades.
“The show is spartan, not a lot of dialogues. We didn’t want to overexplain too much, to let the characters speak for themselves, and the background music helped a lot in doing that. We were also clear that we wanted to emphasise not grief but resilience,” said Nair.
One of the most striking moments comes when Neelam (Rajshri Deshpande) realises it’s her son’s birthday. She has to get out of bed and continue the court battle, knowing she’ll never celebrate it with him again. The orchestral score in that scene, built around high string harmonics, evokes resilience, even as grief is palpable in every frame.
“I didn’t feel like I needed to have a separate vocabulary, but we could talk in terms of what a character is doing or scene is happening, and they would embody that in the score,” said Nair. “At their hearts they are fantastic storytellers, observers of life, and they bring it to their work.”
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Tight deadlines, no shortcuts
The duo’s process depends on when they’re brought into a project. Sometimes, they have months to research and experiment. Other times, they have to work at breakneck speed. For Avinash Arun’s Killa, they had just 12 days to finish the score before the film went to the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Crystal Bear by the Children’s Jury.
Budgets often dictate when composers are hired, and they’re usually among the last to come on board. It can be frustrating for them.
“It would definitely be helpful to get in at the script stage because then we have more freedom to explore different music, and also for any last-minute changes. Usually, we are the last ones in,” Taylor said.
But they make it work—bringing in live musicians when there’s money, getting creative with limited resources when there isn’t.
No matter the constraints, they shape each score to fit the film’s world. In Sonchiriya, they created what Taylor calls an ‘Eastern Western’ for the theme. It riffs off the film’s Chambal setting with his own fascination for Hollywood cowboy movies. The violin, performed by a Rajasthani player, evokes both the rugged landscape and the film’s plotline of rebellion, dacoits, and police. Instead of the traditional galloping rhythm used in Westerns, Taylor’s string portion evokes the slower, rolling movement of a camel’s gait, creating a distinct sound.
“There is now an understanding that it’s not about having a signature sound but complementing the material, be it film or web series. Naren and Benedict are at the forefront of it,” said director Prashant Nair, who worked with them on Trial By Fire. “They serve the tone and universe of the show—can you imagine Ship of Theseus or Kohrra without the music?”
The duo are perfectionists, constantly refining their compositions.
“They are always at it, and that’s something I really like about them. There have been times when I have liked and approved a certain piece but they have gone ahead and redone it because they weren’t entirely happy with it, and have managed to come up with something better,” said Sudip Sharma. He is also working with them for the upcoming second season of Kohrra, slated for release this year.
Rehashing past work doesn’t interest them. For Naren & Benedict, every new project, storyline, and character is an opportunity to play with sound in a way they haven’t before.
“Even working in Paatal Lok helped us forge a new musical language,” said Taylor. “More people in India are investing in background scores. It’s now about the musical identity and world they bring to a film or series.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)