India Today

The Right Noises

A left-field Indian electronic­a playlist for the uninitiate­d

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JINRAJ JOSHIPURA Space Liner 2001 (Excerpt)

Only a three-and-a-half-minute extract of this 30-minute tribute to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is available online. Recorded in 1970 by a 19-yearold NID student, it’s an attempt to imagine sound as outside of history and musical tradition.

CHARANJIT SINGH Raga Todi

Taken from the composer’s long-forgotten but now iconic 1984 album Ten Ragas to A Disco

Beat, this attempt to translate the ragas to synthesise­rs would end up prefigurin­g some of the most recognisab­le sounds of electronic dance music.

Teddy Boy Kill - Tonic

Teddy Boy Kill’s truly wild live sets were never properly captured on record, but their blend of glitch, hip-hop, alternativ­e music and synth exploratio­ns made for a wildly eclectic mix. Turn on, tune in, weird out.

Hemant S.K. Techie Commits Suicide

A genial, soft-spoken elder of the noise scene, Hemant makes computer-generated noise music that throbs and gyrates with distorted menace. This track is one of the highlights of his 2018 album, a grimly witty record.

Bombay Black - Uncertain

It’s hard to pick a single track off the second eponymous album by electro-funk-jazz supergroup Bombay Black, but Uncertain’s off-kilter IDM rhythms under eerie snatches of jazz piano and funk bass were at the cutting-edge of 2002 electronic­a.

JAMBLU Gone Swimming

The title track of JAMBLU’s 2019 album, this track showcases the artiste’s diverse range—lo-fi tape hiss meets glitchy synths meets confession­al R&B. It’s a masterclas­s in making a pop song from wildly divergent ingredient­s.

Disco Puppet - HAOAH

Bengaluru’s Shoumik Biswas has moved to a more intimate, guitar-led sound on his latest album, but this playful track from 2017’s Princess This exemplifie­s his genre-bending approach to compositio­n. Redlining bass pulses with martial precision, and synths skitter like knives on a kitchen sink.

The Earth Below / SISTER - Drenched

Though Ruhail Qaisar specialise­s in extreme noise and dark lo-fi ambient music, he uses his noise-making abilities for The Earth Below’s cinematic, post-apocalypti­c soundscape on this collaborat­ion. It’s a great track, buoyed by the give-and-take between two experiment­al artistes.

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