“I spent three years living in India and became fascinated by Indian culture and music during this time. Hindustani and Carnatic classical music gave me a strong feeling of connection with the incredibly deep cultures that span back so many thousands of years, I found this profoundly moving.
Separately, I’ve always been drawn towards electronic music, especially for its energy and quite unique ability to create futuristic, otherworldly soundscapes.
I sensed a synergy between Indian classical music that vividly reflected the past and electronic music that projects forward – This inspired me to try and combine the two. I think Hyperbolic is one of my most successful attempts at this fusion. It uses a mixture of Carnatic and Hindustani samples from a variety of different sources, mostly heavily processed and layered with atmospheric electronic sounds. The aim was to create a deep, vivid ambience that reflected and respected the ancient cultural roots, but also sounded futuristic and adventurous.
Hyperbolic was released by Nasha Records in December 2012 and has been played on BBC radio 1 & 1Xtra, The BBC Asian Network & EVR Radio (New York).
Check out Hyperbolic on Sound-cloud
I’ve also got big love for old bollywood songs; the diversity and musicianship I find really inspiring. I stumbled across this incredibly beautiful song by TalatMahmood while browsing youtube and was immediately struck by ideas for a re-interpretation. I set about re-working it, focusing a lot on restoration (the song was recorded in 1951 and very dusty sounding!) and percussion which was largely missing from the original. I then played an early version to friend and co-producer who really liked the direction and added futher elements – We sporadically worked on it over about 5 months and sent the finished track to Nihal of BBC Radio 1 who played it several times.
A few months later Talat Mahmoods granddaughter contacted me with some very kind comments, thanking me for exposing his music to a younger generation and saying that he would have been fascinated by our reinterpretation – Very humbling but also a relief as i did feel uneasy re-working such a classic song that is close to many peoples hearts.
Check out Talat Mahmood – Meri Yaad Main
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