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With a dearth of music albums being launched in Pakistan, along comes Ismail Ka Urdu Shehar, the country's first music book-album by music composer and producer Zohaib Kazi.

The album will be launched in December this year. Published by Markings, the album will bring forward popular artistes like Zoe Viccaji, Omran Shafique, Abbas Ali Khan and Kazi himself.

The animated video has been looked after by Kamal Khan and the project spanned over four years with some of the frames hand-drawn digitally.

Given that all albums are based on a tale or two, Ismail Ka Urdu Shehar considers science fiction to be its muse to narrate he journey of a futuristic Earth's Large Hadron Collider experiment whose repercussions have had a ripple effect on the universe, challenging the very existence of a distant planet. In pursuit of this, Ismail Alset a bewildered scientist, follows clues to find answers that will save the universe.

The novella and the album will be available to all next month.