[On 16th-19th January, 2019, Homegrown is throwing a first-of-its-kind music festival in Mumbai designed to celebrate the city’s vast and diverse music culture. Dive deep into a wide variety of dynamic workshops, exhibitions, curated tours, panels, pop-ups, performances and parties that promise to be inclusive of all kinds of tastes and people.
There’s something for everyone, click here to find what’s perfect for you.]
From veteran music labels to more recent DIY crop ups, it’s always raining releases when you know just the collectives to watch out for. We’ve sifted through the offerings for you and rounded up the record labels and music collectives across the subcontinent (and slightly beyond) that have been making waves in recent times, genre no bar.
Here’s a look at them:
Set up by Madhav Shorey (aka Kohra) and Gaurav Malekar (of BLOT) in 2011, New Delhi-based Qilla Records has been paving the way for underground dance music with a commitment since its inception. With 128 releases and 8 albums by 74 artists till date, the roster is diverse with a sweet spot for quality minimal techno and house, including Lucas Monge, SHFT, Jayant | Jitter, Folic State and Midnight Traffic.
Madhav explains, ‘The master plan of the label is to showcase (very) promising Indian talent along with some of the most cutting edge music globally, and definitely label showcases in India and internationally.”
[Check out the label’s Soundcloud and Facebook.]
Run by Vishnu PS (aka Soulspace) and Nikhil Kaul (aka Frame/Frame) Lowlit Records is one of the most promising gifts of 2015. Describing it as ‘an artist collective, record label, and a multi-platform cultural curator’ Vishnu shares, “Lowlit is all about uncompromising, forward-thinking, genre-less music.”
‘Flutter’ by Frame/Frame was the first release off the label — brooding and powerful with slick production, including collaborations with Curtain Blue, Big City Harmonics and vocalist Garima — and in 2016, it went on to organise two editions of Lowlit BeatDesk. As a part of a collaborative workshop that took place in Mumbai and, subsequently, Bangalore, producers were challenged to a make a beat using random samples selected by them in a mere 45 minutes, after which the most promising creations were chosen and fleshed out into full-fledged tracks over the span of a few weeks.
Tune in to the soundscapes below to know more about what Lowlit Beatdesk is working towards.
[Follow Lowlit on Facebook & Soundcloud.]
Set up in 2004 by Rishu Singh, Ennui.bomb has been an instrumental proponent of the burgeoning independent scene in India. The DIY label is behind the 9-edition strong crowdfunded venture ‘Control ALT Delete’ that has become a thing of legend for having cultivated audiences with their punk/rock sounds across the country. They also come out with their ‘Stupiditties’ compilations every year, featuring the freshest talent from across the country. Check out the label’s entire roster of artists here.
“I started ennui.BOMB in 2004 for a simple selfish reason: to listen to music I like. All around me was gigs and CDs full of sounds that did not appeal to me and I wanted to change that. If labels and promoters were not going to give me what I wanted to hear, I decided to do it myself. Eleven years later I am happy that ennui.BOMB is known for a niche kind of sound in the Indian indie scene,” says Rishu.
In their upcoming 10th edition, Control ALT Delete will be taking place at the open-air Roaring Farm, Mumbai’s dirt track/motor sports location, in Malad, hosting 35 artists across five stages on February 11th and 12th. Organisers Nikhil Udupa and Himanshu Vaswani will be spearheading this edition, featuring artists spanning genres; these include bands from Delhi-based MOSKO to metal outfit Demonic Resurrection, drum and bass artist Ox7gen, and The Family Cheese, to experimental-pop band Lawntuba. On programming the biggest edition of the crowdfunded property so far, Udupa says, “We are trying to represent five major genres: metal, alt-indie, singer-songwriters, hip-hop and electronica.” Check out the full line-up here.
Bangalore-based electronic producer _RHL (also one half of Sulk Station) has not only succeeded in creating a platform for artists in the city, their early-2016 release ‘Peach Tea Since July’ officially launched their label in a feat of collaboration including Disco Puppet, Skippy and Machli. (Download it here.)
Consolidate also made waves at Magnetic Fields Festival 2015 with its collaboration with Pakistan-based Forever South at a secret party presented by THUMP and Border Movement.
After outstanding releases last year including Worm’s Cottage’s ‘Standing Feathers’ album and Disco Puppet’s ‘Spring’ EP, Consolidate is back to give us the chills with their latest heady release with razor sharp production, freshly released this year.
Techno veteran Arjun Vagale’s sound has been described as ‘intense, driven and atmospheric’ and his relentless experimentation with his music has taken him all over the world. His global record label retains a similar penchant for ‘high-quality dancefloor tunes’.
“In addition to releasing their own productions, the cosmopolitan duo aim to give a voice to fresh new talent from around the world. The innovative label focuses on underground sounds rather than being defined by any one genre.”
With a roster comprising of Alex Dolby, Fiord, Jay Haze, Kosmas Epsilon, Pawas, Dave Ellesmere, Ray Kajioka, Dale Anderson, MOS, Peter Horrevorts, George Delkos, Fog, Dheeraj Sareen, Danny Beggs, Arjun Vagale has also co-founded UnMute Agency, which has been tirelessly pushing India’s underground talent since its inception.
[Follow Maktub on Facebook.]
Pushing ‘left-field Asian-tinged electronica’ since 2001 via Ethnotechno.com to ‘take the sounds of the diaspora back to its source: South Asia’, dimmSummer is also the co-founder of the New York-based High Chai Recordings. Cultivating audiences for a solid 15 years now, this label’s contribution to the electronic scene in India has been as steady as their allegiance to finding the freshest of dub, dubstep and drum and bass sounds from the region.
“I feel that artists and audiences in India are more open to a larger array of musical experiences than other places, simply due to their size and geography,” he tells Homegrown. “For the most part, India is a tropical country, so it’s warm year-round and that lends to a party atmosphere better than the cold concrete jungles of NYC, for example. India is starting to mimic the West Coast of the US because of this shared climate. So this kind of openness to go out and explore sounds, coupled with the sheer size of demographics promotes growth, variation and experimentation more than usual.”
Featuring artists like Pippin, Sandunes, Bastik Legion and most recently, When Pandas Attack, High Chai is one to keep an eye out for. Follow them on Facebook right here to keep up.
Indie electronic music in the subcontinent carves its own niche with Dualism Records, managed by Sahej Bakshi (aka Dualist Inquiry) and Tej Brar.
“My objective with this is to help Indian fans and music lovers discover their next favourite artist, and to also help these incredibly talented artists (some of whom are less than a year into gigging) reach out to a larger audience more quickly,” Sahej explained in an NH7 interview.
While the latest release off the label is Dualist Inquiry’s ‘Natural Disasters’ EP, the most memorable release by these guys has no doubt been the collaborative tapestry ‘Subterra’ featuring artists including Frame/Frame, Nanok, Big City Harmonics and Su Real.
[Follow Dualism Records on Soundcloud.]
“All good music and musicians have one thing in common. They all sound Kadak.”
Describing themselves as a ‘not-for-profit and ambitious’ record label, Kadak Apple was started by singer-songwriter Tejas Menon and Krish Makhija. Not only has the label featured some very interesting singer-songwriters in their acoustic ‘Kadak Sessions’ on Youtube, its debut release was Tejas’ own 5-track pop-rock EP ‘Small Victories’.
With artists like Warren Mendonsa, Prateek Kuhad and Meera Shenoy performing in their sessions and with Short Round performing at the iconic Sofar Sounds Bombay session, we’re keen on hearing more sounds coming out of this promising Bombay-based label soon.
[Follow them on Facebook, Soundcloud & Youtube.]
Brainchild of Haamid Rahim (aka Dynoman) and Bilal Nasir Khan (aka Rudoh), Forever South is all about propelling the live electronic music in Karachi forward. Comprising Dreadnaught, Run Circles, Alien Panda Jury, EMPEROR LEPHANT, and Toll Crane, here’s a roster that’s chock full of experimental artists raring to take the movement on to the next level.
Besides their hair-raising collaboration with Consolidate at the Magnetic Fields Festival, their latest compilation album ‘Forever South Collections Vol. 4’ just launched on FADER magazine and we just can’t get enough.
Some of the label’s previous releases include Dynoman’s ‘Naubahar’, as well as singles from Rudoh, Friedi and Alien Panda Jury.
“The electronic and music scene in Pakistan is amazing,” Forever South told Wild City. “We have a lot of beatmakers up here in Karachi and hopefully some other all around the country as well. Our beatmakers here keep creating beats and fresh sounds that amaze us. But aside from beat makers we have amazing sounds coming out of Pakistan! There are bands like Basheer and the Pied Pipers, Mole, and //Orangenoise constantly pushing the boundaries with sound design and effects.
“There are other artists in the genre of ambient and post rock like Asfandyar Khan and 6LA8 who too are making amazing sounds and modelling effects so brilliantly! So we have a whole bunch of awesomeness coming out of the scene!”
[Follow FXS on Facebook & Soundcloud.]
Representing New Delhi-based moody waltz act Run It’s The Kid, Shantanu Pandit, Rounak Maitie and Prateek Kuhad, there’s been a slew of gigs by artists off the roster leaving an expanding audience of admirers in their wake.
“Independent labels in India barely make any money from traditional sources,” says founder of Pagal Haina Records, Dhruv Singh. “And to survive, you can’t solely be a label. At Pagal Haina, we provide a 360-degree solution to our artistes - from managing them and booking shows to helping them release their music and working on their branding.”
Prateek Kuhad’s ‘In Tokens & Charms’ was picked by Apple Music as the ‘Best Indian Indie Album of 2015’, and Run It’s the Kid’s self-titled EP (produced by Miti Adhikari), released early 2016, was the band’s own soulful slow waltz straight into playlists crafted for daydreaming and reflections.
Knowmad Records, co-founded by Aazin Printer and Kumail Hamid, is all about the sounds of the future. With collaborations and releases lined up with the likes of Sweatson Klank (Los Angeles, USA), Daisuke Tanabe (Chiba, Japan), Dynoman from Forever South (Karachi, Pakistan) and Smileswithteeth (Montreal, Canada), Indian producers we can expect to hear off Knowmad includes Kumail and Profound.
These are the guys to thank teary-eyed for the four-city Daisuke tour and workshops last December, including a performance at Magnetic Fields Festival.
“We’re paving the way for the evolution of emerging artists in the country and making potential collaborations with bigger, international artists a reality, whilst putting India on the map,” says Aazin. “We want to push the envelope and create a big happy family.”
“We see our artists as wanderers of the world - always on the go, constantly looking for inspiration, cultures and experiences, and finding new homes for their music along the way,” Kumail says. “There are no borders or rules in our world: only a common love for forward-thinking sounds of the future.”
Dasta is the most recent coming together of six unique artists and creators as a platform pushing culture, collaboration and community.
Dasta exists to inspire exploration & DIY approaches to growth and empowerment through the arts. The individuals that comprise the collective are aligned in a humble goal to bring people together through the process of music-making.
A shorter version of this article originally appeared on Krunk Live. Write to us at editorial@homegrown.co.in with ‘independent music collectives’ as the subject if you think we missed out on any.