The first time I heard Castles in the Sky, I was... disoriented. I shook the headphone cable and hit refresh on the Soundcloud page over and again. Every time, something kept happening to the track halfway through. I asked myself, “Is it just me?” The track in question is Covert, the closer to Castles in the Sky’s debut EP Fugu Fish. It starts alright — an eerie, minimal beat that grows or sheds an element every four bars. Eventually, a melody...
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15 May 2013
Chapter II. That's the name of Benga's second album, and we think it's spot on. Yes, he's a 'pioneer'. It's a word that's thrown around a lot when describing either him or his long time collaborator Skream. And it's true, yet he's more. Over the course of the last decade Benga has been at the very forefront of fresh, upfront and in your face bass music, helping first push a sound that the entire world now recognises as dubstep. Already in his 15th...
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08 May 2013
Gaurav Malaker of BLOT! is least satisfied with stamping ‘DJ’ on his curriculum vitae. He feverishly works the cranks on his original Ableton Live compositions; his partner-in-tricks, Avinash Kumar engineers striking visual displays. Together they create immersive live experiences that, on their count, have ached India’s nightlife contours to accommodate performances of international acclaim. To think of artists that have as much control over...
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30 April 2013
I guess I loved this album instantly because I could hear the sea all over it. The first time I’d ever heard James Blake, I was in a red-lit room late at night in a small house, eventually compelled to dance alone - very slowly. Everything that Blake creates, however varied - is perceptibly held together by a common thread of delicacy or tenderness, while still making it so vital to just move. The 2011 album wasn’t a pure strain of anything I’d...
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18 April 2013
Mikhail Mehra hardly displays the yellow-eyed, spotty-tongued form you might expect from someone who's job profile includes raising inebriated hell with the likes of artists like Skrillex, Datsik, Skream & Benga (to name but a few) even while he personifies them via video formats, on the road and onstage. At only 22 though, it makes sense that his fountain of youth shows no signs of running dry just yet. You’d be right to presume he’s not...
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09 April 2013
We needed a den - some sort of dingy, intimate space where the alternative music crew could disappear into a few hours a week to exorcise their more spirited inner demons. Some place where the dirt came off easy and people actually preferred the sound of stomping, shuffling feet over half-witted snippets of the same conversation we heard last week and the crashing collarbones of clumsy hugs. So when Cool Chef Cafe first opened its doors to underground...
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03 April 2013
As millions of sounds get added to the Internet, we continue to wade through them in search of warmth and off-kilter comfort. In a time when nobody’s comfortable having to relate to lyrics, electronic music will become our safe place. As you listen on infinitely, related sounds may start finding their way closer to home. I’d like to think the stage is set for our music to shine. In releases so far, we’ve heard some comedy-metal(!) and witch-house/chudailstep,...
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28 March 2013
To prick India’s electronic scene is to instigate an unhealthy bout of hyperventilation and rants on its true origins. Luckily, I’ve traced a few artists along that bloodline that speak lucidly, for the music alone. Space Jams, humbly introducing himself as Yohann, is one of those artists – fun loving, laconic, and for the night. He’s a member of the venerated party-squad they call Bhavishyavani Future Soundz. Bhavishyavani today is a medium...
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21 March 2013
Sahej Bakshi has a plan. Many plans in fact, but, really, they’re all about the same thing. He wants his music to be heard. By a lot of people. More people than most of his peers in the Indian electronic scene have even begun to think about. He’s not too interested in selling records, and radio doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind. Those are worries for another year. But right now, Sahej Bakshi, better known as Dualist Inquiry, is only focused...
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15 March 2013
Talking to Reji about his music career, you can’t really help but get excited. He loves this shit so fucking much. His enthusiasm is just about as infectious as his genre hopping sets. Reji is an accidental DJ. Far from aspiring to rock Bombay crowds, a younger Reji, fascinated by acoustics and speaker making, fell into his role as one of Bombay’s most active selectors when other plans didn’t work out: “[DJing] started as a fluke more or less…...
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12 March 2013
“Music is the best politics. If you want to make change then singing songs and having people sing your songs with you can actually induce that. You can make that difference.” Randolph Correia’s stage presence is electrifying–almost wired. It was 18 years ago as the lead guitarist of Pentagram’s crowd-chanting shows, and it continues to be today as the guitarist/producer of electro-pop duo Shaa’ir + Func’s strobe-strewn live acts....
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28 February 2013
Peter Cat Recording Co have a longstanding history of not giving a fuck. The New Delhi hemp jazz outfit is perhaps the most experimental band in the country, but they do what they do so well, they get away with it. In tradition with the Peter Cat way of doing what everyone least expects you to, frontman Suryakanth Sawhney recently unveiled a solo electronic project titled Lifafa. I called him up to investigate: What is Lifafa? I’ve done a bunch...
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22 February 2013
Forward thinking, art inspiring and learning oriented technology-meets-art-meets-design-meets-journalism (and more) platform: The UnBox Festival – was the most unconventional convention and the perfect spot for the second edition of SoundCamp. (Read about the origin of SoundCamp here) Initiated by Adaptr and Border Movement, SoundCamp is essentially, a musical-collaborative programme that focuses on artists from South Asia and Germany within the...
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19 February 2013
Doc Daneeka makes music for your heart and your ass. His blend of house, garage and funky keeps an ear to the rave culture of yesteryear while incorporating the soulful tradition of early house and first-wave garage over wide-open basslines that nod to dub. We’re tempted to call his music reckless, and we don’t mean that as an insult. Rather, we’re drawn to the recklessness with which he uses sounds. Doc might punctuate a straightforward garage...
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14 February 2013
Once made up of Polish production/DJ duo Marek Bogdanski and Lukasz Rodziewicz, Dreadsquad is now helmed by Bogdanski as a solo project. Over the span of his lengthy career he has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the Polish reggae and hip-hop scene, supplying instrumentals to the likes of Marika, East West Rockers, Ras Luta, Junior Stress, Kacezet, Natural Dread Killaz, Pablopavo and Reggaenerator. That's not to say he's restricted by...
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05 February 2013
Downstairs at Zo takes me back to those wonderful little bohemian traps on Brick Lane in East London; reinforced Moroccan like dens acting as shelters against the world outside. As you descend downstairs at Zo, warm colours and low, comfortable furniture immediately draw you in, and as you survey the room for a cosy corner you can easily resign yourself to cancelling any other plans you may have made that evening. On our first visit, projectors filled...
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30 January 2013
Puma did it right. Brands looking to boost their cool value in India ought to take note. Mix a handful of local tastemakers, an airy warehouse, a sunny Sunday afternoon, a globe-hopping soundtrack and lots of free beer. Add forty on-site tailors, case after case of pre-cut fabrics in a rainbow of colours and a bevy of cutting edge graphics by local artists and designers. Make magic. On Sunday 27 January we at Wild City paired with Puma to bring The...
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29 January 2013
Sunburn surprised us. Sitting in Bangalore, Bombay, or Delhi, it’s easy to get lost in our own little world. We complain about the size of the scene, always wanting more, and forgetting how fortunate we are to have access to interesting and creative artists and venues. To put it plainly, we can be snobs. And when one is a snob, an event like Sunburn presents an easy target. Many of India’s highest flying mainstream electronic DJs play with the...
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24 January 2013
There’s just no way to write this review without talking about the name. We really wish there was. Cocaine. That’s the name of the club. Somebody made a terrible mistake. We’ll leave it at that. But looking past that disaster, we find a venue that – despite some teething problems – shows serious promise. Cocaine isn’t a big room venue like blueFROG, or a cozy hang-out-cum-party-spot in the vein of T.L.R. More importantly, it isn’t one...
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16 January 2013
Lay down the incredulity you reserve for the undeserving on end-of-year lists. This isn’t that round-up. We’re not looking back or patting backs. In 2013, we’re looking to widen roads for artists on the cusp. All of last year, we saw alternatives to commercial electronic music bloom across disparate pockets of the nation. This year, we’re are counting on these very musicians to grow and...
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10 January 2013
The smartest thing the minds behind the Bacardi NH7 Weekender do is to cut the festival up into bite-sized pieces: instead of a single, vast, dust-ridden field, you get six manageable, more or less isolated gigs running all at once. This works for a number of reasons. When the programmers at NH7 book their acts, they do it from across the board: you have everything from acoustic balladry to dancehall, from indie to novelty fusion. Separating it by...
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17 December 2012
“What one wants is so fucking simple. Just a room with a big sound system and someone selling beers that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.” - Praxis As a nerdy white DJ who moved to India to do a master’s in Marxist Indian political theory, there’s something simultaneously awesome and unnerving about sitting down to interview Praxis, a nerdy white DJ who moved to India to do a master’s in Marxist Indian political theory. Awesome, because...
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19 December 2012
Food, music and nightlife have a strange relationship in India. Night-owls expect nothing less than to be able to bask in a 3-course meal or buffet at 2am in any nightclub or bar, and disco dancers don't seem to bat an eyelash as steaming hot food passes them by on the dance floor. Maybe this is a good thing as it offers an opportunity to sober up the drink drivers before their idiotic crusades around the ring road home, but it certainly is a strange...
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12 December 2012
Michal Menert takes the stage at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender, Pune. He resembles the Shining’s Jack Torrance as if he were handed a second shot at life, wrapped in a grey shirt and striped maroon tie. He mashes coarse hip-hop beats and soulful vocal breaks into vibrant compositions. The audience respond in code, stomping their feet and playing with the dust clouds. He is after all, one in a syndicate of Pretty Lights Music artists that can turn a...
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05 December 2012
Part One: Logistics This post should be about something else. It should be a post about the many musical acts – some brilliant and others less so – that graced the stages of Ragasthan. And that’s what it was supposed to be. But then Ragasthan happened. And now, the attendees seem to oscillate between judgments; was Ragasthan a miraculous accomplishment or an organisational disaster of epic proportions? Yes. It was. We can’t help but marvel...
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28 November 2012
Later this week, Heineken Green Room, a series of intimate, invite-only events is due to feature the enigmatic and elusive disco duo Tiger & Woods. The events taking place in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore (details here) promise to feature some of the most exciting and innovative sounds this side of The Atlantic. We need not mention some of the most dancefloor friendly too. Known for their anonymity and loop-friendly funk-disco-house sensibilities,...
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26 November 2012
Madhav (a.k.a Kohra) and I set up Qilla Records in 2010. The idea back then was to have a publishing platform for sounds that we enjoyed as selectors as well as appreciated as producers. What better way to support music you like than to publish it, right? Our philosophy is simple - we are always on the lookout for fresh, unconventional sounds or even conventional sounds in an unconventional format. Or anything that tickles our fancy, for that matter....
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22 November 2012
If there’s something distinctly lacking in Pakistani indie/electronic music, it’s the presence of labels, promoters or clubs. It’s a vacuum that no one’s particularly tried to step up and fill – though economic and security circumstances in Pakistan would hardly seem conducive to it. Last year, a collective made up of Karachi-based electronic musicians, Karachi Detour Rampage, put on one blistering live show and then ostensibly dissipated....
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13 November 2012
Give the crazy old girl her due. Roisin Murphy has walked the thin line between weird and saleable with astonishing skill for nigh on twenty years now, and if she's decided that squeaky-clean floor-fillers are her thing, at this point she can be forgiven. It was always bound to happen, of course; at heart, she's a showgirl. When her first electronic-club-pop-dance-knob-fiddling duo, Moloko, fell apart, it was because she wanted to tour, and her boyfriend-bandmate...
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07 November 2012
The recently concluded G.O.D/Go On... Discover Festival, popularised by a somewhat surprising Beardyman appearance, was plagued by a host of problems. On the surface, the administration feigned smooth - but as we dug a little deeper, the cracks began to show. The festival, originally scheduled to begin at 3pm, sputtered to a 6pm start. The turn-out was shoddy (with Puneites holing up in anticipation of the NH7 Weekender, this came as no surprise)...
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31 October 2012
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