New Artist: Shaan Shiv Suleman

A student of graphic design in Bangalore (big surprise), Shaan Shiv Suleman is a self taught producer whose body of work so far consists of a couple of EPs, singles and flips of producers and bands like Sulk Station and Machli.

“I was raised with music and art around me and believe that this environment has helped channel my creativity. I began experimenting with sound five years ago. I spent a majority of my time composing musical pieces digitally. I spend time recording samples of interesting sounds I hear and use them as different elements in my music.”

It almost sounds like Suleman tunneled first-draft glossy melodies through TV static, i.e. there’s something bright about his sound despite all that grain and fuzzy background noise. Listen carefully and you’ll hear lots of little samples peaking through his morphed, glitchy, slightly broken structures.

Some of Suleman’s tunes ‘feature’ Artifacts (i.e. he’s sampling these guys, something we realised after a couple of frustrating eyebrow furrowing moments of ‘that sounds so familiar’). His warbled manipulation of vocal samples in songs like ‘Wavelengths’ and ‘Apex’ sort of remind us of James Hinton’s (The Range) early experiments distancing and dehumanising the human voice, though it does lack the luscious melodies and finely tuned production and song structures that tie it all together.

It’ll be good to hear a consolidated piece of Suleman in the future instead of disjointed sounds. Of course, not everything he’s put up is spectacular, but theres a lot that shines through and we're keen to see what's coming in the future . Follow him on Soundcloud to hear more and listen to his recent ‘Calculated Risks’ EP below.

Words: Diya Gupta