Details Announced for India’s Very First Synth Festival

SOUND.COM has just revealed details of India's very first synth festival, called (they don’t beat about the bush) – SynthFest, curated by musician Akshay Rajpurohit, known better as the guitarist from Scribe and Pangea and by his electronic alias Aqua Dominatrix, and composer and film-maker Shadaab Kadri.

“When Bob Moog introduced the world to the Minimog D, he had a clear picture in his mind – create an electronic musical instrument which sounds beyond the realm of it’s acoustic bretheren. An instrument that used only electricity to produce sound. Sounds that would power electronic music for generations to come and create new genres of music that were both unimaginable and outright radical at the time.

45 years later, we want to celebrate what synthesizers have been to us – a means to communicate our music in a way that wouldn’t quite be possible without them. We want to celebrate their sound, their quirks, their secrets, their analogness, their digitalness, their madness and uncanny ability to make people smile.

We call this celebration – SynthFest.” – Team SynthFest

An IP of SOUND.COM and extension of GearHouse, where the event is also taking place, SynthFest is slated to take place in Mumbai this September. We got wind of it from Kadri’s blog post (where you can read their whole statement) and first video (below). The new property comes at a time when most of the electronic production coming out of bedrooms is created on laptops; not a lot of young musicians have had the opportunity to physically fiddle around with hard equipment.

The interactive festival attempts to fix that problem by giving attendees access to some of the best synths in the world, letting them play a rare selection of instruments to their hearts desire. Of course, there’s really no one better in India than SOUND.COM to enable a festival of this scale and supply the variety of equipment it requires in the first place. When we spoke to the company's founder and head Warren D’ Souza, he revealed that the instruments they were providing included a range of synths (and drum machines), new and old including vintage Rolands, Waldorfs and “generations of Moogs”. The first taste of the fest in the video below features the ARP Odyssey, recently resurrected by Korg, with music by Aqua Dominatrix. SynthFest will also feature live shows, though the exact details are still to be announced.

Akshay Rajpurohit and Shadaab Kadri will be curating the festival. We’ve also got a funny feeling that SOUND.COM has a few more interesting announcements for musicians lined up for the future - keep an eye out on their Facebook page for updates. Announcements for SynthFest, details and lineups, will trickle in on its Facebook page.