Tech Panda x Kenzani Opt For Sample-Based Hip-Hop On Their Biggest Release Yet With The Album 'Tijori'

The producer and DJ duo of Tech Panda and Kenzani is one of the frontrunners in the most recent crop of musicians borrowing from the vast pool of India's traditional music – whether folk or classical – to use within the context of house, techno and Asian Underground. While that approach has defined the pair's ascent as crowd-favourites in clubs across the country, they open their latest album 'Tijori' with a declaration of how certain music is not for entertainment but for the soul through a recording of classical vocalist Arati Ankalikar explaining it in the context of Hindustani classical music.

To realize that declaration, the tag team of Rupinder Nanda and Kedar Santwani largely forego their usual style to create works inspired by sample-based and lo-fi hip-hop on what is the duo's biggest recorded work to date with its 21 tracks.

“'Tijori' literally is a culmination of our musical journey so far, an album that consists of bits and pieces of our growth and evolution as artists,” says Nanda. “It consists of songs from our early days as producers that we attempted to bring to fruition by reimagining them with the help of some amazing collaborations."

That's not to say, existing fans won't find the kind of fare they are familiar with. The culminating run of the album returns the pair to the four-to-the-floor grooves of techno and house, sampling MC Flowdan on 'East Meets West', taking inspiration from the 80s-90s Indian pop on 'Come with me', including a speech by Lata Mangeshkar on the album's hardest number 'New India', and being tastefully laidback and warm on this section's best work: 'Homecoming', one of the two collaborations with producer Aarav.

However, the crux of the album is in the hip-hop-meets-folktronica approach most obvious in tracks like 'Dulcimer' with its 808 booms underneath struck-string melodies. While the rhythms on 'Tijori' remain solidly tied to club-friendly grooves, there is an obvious footprint of lo-fi hip-hop in its timbres on tracks like 'Nadia' and, more beautifully, as crackles and vinyl dust noise function like the ambience of rain on 'Peace and Chaos' which merges low-end heavy beats underneath samples of konokol rhythms.

The best track on the album though comes early, with the second number (which very much serves as the first as 'Atmaranjan' is more of a skit) 'Pyaar Bhare' kickstarting the album's more leftfield quarter. The track features the formidable playback singer Rekha Bhardwaj in glitch and American West Coast beat scene-inspired soundscapes for the first time ever as she sings a couplet from Mehdi Hassan-popularised ghazal 'Pyaar Bhare Do Sharmeele Nain'.

While the band's experimentation sometimes may not work to add to the emotion of its subject material and sometimes even venture out to uninspired grounds like the lacklustre emulation of jazz on 'Liquid Day', the adventurism of 'Tijori' and brush with experimental hip-hop and folktronica makes the album not just their largest work but also their best.

Listen to 'Tijori' below and follow Tech Panda and Kenzani for more information.