REProduce Indie Art Week | Official Opening Event
Delhi-based music collective REProduce Artists collaborated with the first edition of Indie Art Week, opening a week-long series of events around the capital with an event inspired by the REProduce Listening Room series. The series aims to fill a gap in the ever-iterating and increasingly varied community of live music in India by showcasing talent that might not get heard in venues oriented towards more mainstream music. A Listening Room event would focus purely on the music – in a space where an audience can absorb sound on their own terms.
For this iteration, REProduce returned to KHOJ, after nearly a year’s absence. Along with seven performances across multiple floors, the event also presented a separate contained space dedicated to screening a series of short films, curated by Slingshot Festival. Slingshot took over five blocks in Athens, Georgia later in the month, showcasing a wide range of curated music, electronic art, and technology.
REProduce, introducing the artists (dt. 2017):
Anant Donn Bhatt (Bombay, India)
With over fifteen years of music behind him, Donn’s work has spanned genres and influenced many. Yet, his solo work outside the gamut of Donn Bhat + Passenger Revelator remains elusive. Last June saw him perform a body of work at TIFA Working Studios that drastically differed from what people may expect from him, exposing a sort of panicked yet completely controlled exercise in paranoia, steered only by hardware, software sequencing, a very large microphone, and Donn asserting a sort of series of orders to those fortunate enough to have seen him. This will be the first time he performs something along these lines in Delhi.
Opus (New Delhi, India)
Trained classically and now bringing an entirely different take on his pedigree, Sahil has made it his objective to merge the finesse of someone who can play Debussy and Ravel – namely himself – with a sort of exploration in character dynamics and dialogue that renders the vulnerability of a performer even more visceral – namely, his. His recent performances have incorporated photographic studies, recorded dialogues, a series of props, and vintage Indian television commercials, all woven together into a singular whole by his peerless talent as a pianist.
Disco Puppet (Bangalore, India)
With a seemingly endless series of new releases in the very near future, and the impossible-to-categorise “Spring” EP behind him, Shoumik seems set to both confuse and draw people into his body of work for years to come. As a live performer, his work deploys live drumming and software sequencing, his own processed and live vocals, and a flute. He rarely has the chance to perform in Delhi, so consider this a small taste of what the peerless Consolidate roster has to offer.
SISTER (Leh, India)
Ruhail’s first performance as SISTER was almost a year ago. Since then, he’s played LR sessions multiple times as well as the DISQUIET series curated by Hemant SK, and along the way he has generated disgust, repulsion, a physical seizure, and a complete and utter command of your attention. His work draws upon black metal tropes but takes it to places rarely – if ever – visited, and his performances display an utter conviction of deploying his vision, as well as a healthy disregard for the consequences.
PILLS (New Delhi, India)
Nishant’s first performance was at KHOJ last year, so consider this a sort of mix of nostalgia and future rumination. Utilising an array of guitar pedals, software generators, and sometimes cassette tapes, his work presents textural landscapes that change with the light and where you find yourself in the room, spanning frequencies both heard and unheard.
Toymob (Mukteshwar, India)
Ashhar spends most of his time in a house he made of mud in the hills of Uttarakhand, working on new music and characters both. A veteran of making music in India, his work with Envision still sounds contemporary some ten years on, and he remains active with IJA, Passenger Revelatory,and of course Toymob. The latter remains hard to categorise, but if his last performance at Exhibit 320 is an indication of anything, expect analogue gear, distressed vocal samples, and controlled microphone feedback.
Profound (Chandigarh, India)
Fresh off the back of releasing an EP on Knowmad Records, and having played an LR session for the first time last November, Amandeep’s music deploys off-kilter hip hop production and deft vocal sampling chops, and while his first LR session saw him spin his own production work, for this session, he will recreate this live.
For more information please visit:
Indie Art Week: indieartweek.org
Listening Room: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reproducelisteningroom/
