Artist Speak: Scaling Up With Bangalore's Smirnoff Experience
This season has been quite literally creaking over with the weight of heavy lineups and heavier festival set-ups. As its spine bends over into Quasimodo-like stature, there’s a solitary festival left that may just be the one that breaks its back.
Smirnoff Experience’s incredible attention to production detail represents a whole new form of festival culture in the country and considering what we just witnessed last weekend at Magnetic Fields Festival, we’re hoping more and more festivals catch on to this trend.
It goes without saying that the real attraction of this event goes well beyond just the lineup and straight into the core of vita motus’ gargantuan visual philosophies when it comes to producing festival set-ups, installations et al.
However, we didn’t realise just how anticipated the duo’s presence would be till we caught up with the Indian artists on the festival’s lineup. We coaxed them into telling us why exactly they were looking forward to being at something unpredictable like a Smirnoff Experience amidst a sea of the comfortably familiar. Turns out Vita Motus is at the top of most of their lists too.
Just to make things a little more cohesive, we’ve gone in chronological order of their set times + included snippets of some of their best tunes just in case you want to get an aural feel for what this festival is going to be like.
I. Mode7 (Raffael Kably)
Mode7 is the solo electronic project of producer, Raffael Kably. His debut EP All In Faded Days was met with tremendous critical appreciation
Mode7 will take the stage from 3:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
II. Sulk Station (Rahul & Tanvi Giri)
Sulk Station is an electronic/trip-hop duo from Bangalore formed by Tanvi Rao and Rahul Giri in 2009. Their music is driven by Tanvi Rao’s sultry vocals wrapped in a haze of atmospherics, minimal beats and homegrown synth sounds. Their songs are a mix of contemporary electronic music genres (trip-hop/post-dubstep/ambient) with traces of Indian classical music.
We caught up with one half of the duo, Rahul Giri, and this is what was whetting his sonic appetite.
Sulk Station will take the stage from 4:02 pm - 4:32 pm
III. Sandunes Feat. Squidworks
Sandunes is the full time electronic music project of Sanaya Ardeshir-- Mumbai based producer, composer & synth player. From early influences in jazz and blues, to a defining stint with London underground sounds, her music blends various organic and electronic elements into a hybrid zone that lies somewhere between electronica, garage and post dubstep-- tying in with a unique south asian feel. Easier described outside the genre-box, Sandunes’ live set, incorporating a range of controllers and instruments has been performed in cities across India and in Sri Lanka and Germany.
Her additional two bits..
“It’s also great to be part of a lineup like this. It’s mixing very different styles and the core idea is to introduce opposing spectrums of music to people who are used to listening to the other kind. Harder music for the ones inclined to the more subtle and vice-versa.”
Familiarise your ears with sandunes’ tunes below:
Sandunes Feat. Squidworks will take the stage from 4:40 pm - 5:10 pm
V. Dualist Inquiry (Sahej Bakshi)
Dualist Inquiry is the brainchild and solo project of Sahej Bakshi, a music producer, guitarist and cerebral agent who graduated from the Thornton Music School at USC in Los Angeles, CA. Since returning to India in 2010, Sahej has grown to be considered one of the leading producers and live performers of electronic music in India, releasing original music and touring extensively.
His sound is broadly categorised as a fresh mix of live electronica and guitar-based rock, and has been steadily winning audiences over across the country.
Dualist Inquiry will take the stage from 5:20 pm - 6:05 pm
VI. BBC ( Sohail Arora & Kris Correya) vs Vachan Chinnappa
The Mumbai-based BBC (Bay Beat Collective) comprising of Kris Correya and Sohail Arora was formed in late 2008 in response to the abundance of standard-issue electronica so often churned out in clubs and bars across the country. Influenced by bass music artists across the board, BBC explores new aural territory, dabbling in styles ranging from drum n bass to dubstep, with a partiality to “phat” basslines and high voltage grooves that are infectious, delicious & supremely funky.
DJ Vachan is hailed as an Electronic God From Bangalore. One of India’s most popular DJs specializing in minimal tech and hard electronic sounds. Vachan has collaborated with the best in the field, in India and internationally.
Vachan & BBC will take the stage from 6:15 pm - 7 pm
VII. Rusko
Hello, world: Rusko kindly requests that you wake the hell up.
The Leeds-born DJ/producer who ascended with the original U.K. dubstep movement – and gave it one of its first and most enduring anthems, a bolt of foul-mouthed rave lightening called “Cockney Thug” – is here to tell you that music is not about labels and dance is no fad.
Rusko will take the stage from 7:15 pm - 8:15 pm
VIII. Nero
Featuring producers Dan Stephens and Joe Ray along with vocalist Alana Watson, London’s Nero were born a straight drum’n’bass act, but they steadily evolved into a more layered affair, mixing dubstep beats with classic house music melodies and vocals.
Formed in 2004 and signed to the Formation Records label that same year, the group released a series of drum’n’bass 12”s that would take them up to 2008. Since then, Nero has taken the world to dizzying heights of production genius and textured aural experiences and shows no signs of slowing down.
Nero will take the stage from 8:30 pm - 9:45 pm
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