Interview SANDUNES
Sandunes’ Sanaya Ardeshir is enjoying an upward momentum that has bought her sound to the attention of everyone from Ableton to Warp, Bonobo to Red Bull…
With live performances that ‘reveal an appetite for integrating the worlds of studio and stage’, Sandunes was on something of a roll pre-pandemic, having made a mark at many high profile festivals including Blue Dot, WOMAD, Roskilde and more. However she’s used the enforced time and studio world to come up with her best EP yet, and continue an upward momentum that has brought her sound to the attention of everyone from Ableton to Warp, Bonobo to Red Bull…
After six critically acclaimed EPs – the latest, Nowhere To Stand, released on !K7 this summer – Sandunes is making waves way beyond her home city of Mumbai, India. Sandunes is the producer and pianist Sanaya Ardeshir and her music covers everything from the pop-inspired four tracks on the new EP through electronic jazz, right over to more leftfield works, including an album of natural soundscapes which has raised money for COVID-19 relief in India.
Sandunes has also successfully been able to bring her musical output over into the live arena. notching up some very highly-regarded performances, including a Warp Records and Boiler Room-commissioned performance for Different Trains 1947 at London’s Barbican Centre, support slots for both Bonobo and George Fitzgerald, a tour with the critically acclaimed UK jazz drummer Richard Spavento, plus a string of high-profile festival appearances in 2019 including Blue Dot, Roskilde, Magnetic Fields and WOMAD.
Sanaya has also lectured for both Point Blank and Ableton and as an Ableton Certified Trainer, taken part in the company’s loop Summit. Indeed so impressed were Ableton and Red Bull by the producer that they asked her to take part in the latter’s Searching For Music project which involved her creating samples and remixes by recording sounds in Mumbai for a bespoke sample pack which you can get from the Ableton website.
Live to studio
However, it’s not all been plain sailing as, like for so many artists out there, the live arena has largely been an empty one for the last year and a half for Sandunes. But again, like so many frustrated producers and performers, she’s channelled the time and creativity into new music: a new EP that is possibly her best work yet. Nowhere To Stand has a pop sensibility that is sure to increase a profile already at an international level, and well beyond anything Ardeshir expected as a child in India.