Rohan Hastak aka Big City Harmonics is difficult to neatly categorise in his aural artistry. He’s less about causing dance floor massacres as he is involved in incredibly intelligent production and attention to melodic warmth in his tracks; traits that have found solace in more personal spaces for Indian audiences. Simply put--it’s the kind of music that you’d enjoy in multiple surroundings, making him quite an anomaly in the current breed of electronic music in the country.
With the release of his second EP today, we took some time out to dissect the blocks of his past that have stacked up in order to make him the artist he is today. For all thematic purposes and intent, here’s a brief timeline of Hastak’s evolution as an artist, with pictures to boot.
1989 - 2003 - He grew up surrounded by a lot of musicians from his mother’s side, listening to all the classics from The Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel. His uncle, a guitar player, was an especially big influence turning him onto Weather Report, Miles Davis, Earl Klugh and hoards of other jazz musicians at a young age.
2003 - He never really took an interest in an instrument till he was about 13 and he got his first guitar. It was a cherry red gibson acoustic and he managed to pick up a few chords from his friends in boarding school at Woodstock, Mussoorie. That’s also the time he happened to get into a pretty severe Blink 192, Green Day and Linkin Park phase. As he put it himself, ‘it had to happen.’
2005 - Soon after, he left boarding school and joined his parents in Qatar where he played a terrible acoustic guitar which still lies collecting dust at his house. By the time he was 14, he’d convinced his father to get him his first electric guitar, a Yamaha starter pack. He kept practicing and got a lot better. At the time, he was listening to Zeppelin, Sabbath and the likes ultimately descending into a guitar-shred phase where he learned Paul Gilbert songs, attempted Malmsteen and Vai and of course, played a LOT of Dream Theater. Luckily, that went on pretty long and he got into Prog Rock in a big way. Rush, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis and the works. By 17, he’d had his revelation--he could shred a guitar fairly decently but he couldn’t write a song to save his life.
September, 2007 - He went to Canada to study Media theory, critical theory and film and while he was there he got his real taste of being involved in the music world.
2008 - He formed a band along with two friends called Kuru. They wanted to stay a three-piece live act so he started playing bass and fell in love with it.
Late 2009 - Kuru recorded an EP (listen to it here) toured the East coast of Canada for nearly four weeks and were on track, doing pretty well. As far as he’s concerned, all his musical education happened while he was with this band and they taught each other how to write songs, or at least something that resembled a song. [Kuru now goes by the name Poacher Industries and has a new EP out. They have the same lineup with a new bassist. ]
January, 2011- After he’d finished his degree he knew he really wanted to come back to India, while his interests were starting to shift towards electronic music. A long time fan of chillout and trip hop, it was only a matter of time before he wanted to see what he could do with those influences. He returned with every intention to work as an assistant director. The plan was to do both film and music but he ended up quitting the former about a year and a half into that job and made the decision to focus on making music full time.
March, 2013 - He had about 14 tracks ready and put out seven of them as free single releases, all of which you can hear here.
November 2013 - Which brings us to the present. Here he is with his first EP, a few tracks on sound cloud and still trying to understand how exactly his “musical roots can be applied to this new, software based medium of music making.” He affirms, “I’m still groping in the dark with this stuff, but it is a lot of fun and I plan to keep doing it for some time.”
Compiled by: Rohan Hastak & Homegrown Staff
Images: Courtesy Rohan Hastak