The 2007 Indian Electronica Festival in review

2007 was an interesting and exciting year for the Indian Electronica Festival - it was our second year throwing the gig and despite this, was ambitious enough to host installments in 4 cities on 3 continents!

Kicking off the year, we started the circuit in Toronto on July 20th with an action-packed line up of artists presenting a varied musical program.  Opening the night, DJ Alkmst and I fired up the decks to warm the stage for Cassius Khan and his wife Amika Kushwaha - who gave the audience a unique experience with a traditional performance on tabla and harmonium where Cassius amazingly sang Ghazals whilst playing tabla with electrifying speed and finesse.  From there, we had LAL play selections from their new album - soulfully jazzed up downtempo numbers, which were followed well by the Dubslingers who laid down some sick live internationally flavored dubstep, complete with belly dancing!  It was a long night of great music and after Anuj Rastogi's Omnesia ensemble and then the Nawtiks finished up, there was unfortunately no time for v:shal Kanwar to jump on the decks!

I had some trepidation about our next session in London England - this would be the second year we were being hosted in Shoreditch at a place called 333 with 2 floors of simultaneous programming spread over about 6 hours in one night.  2006 proved that it could be done but also that this space was definately not suited for live music and was understaffed to boot.  Well, it turned out that the last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer was so gorgeous that people ended up outside for most of the day and attendance at the Festival that night was lower than we expected... plus, Shaanti, the largest South Asian desi-hiphop-cum-drumnbass clubnight in Birmingham/London, was being held that same night so our young South Asian audience seemed to opt for the mainstream option and not venture over to 333.  On the bill for our Festival that night though, we had some interesting performers - notably, Eisha, Aesh and Yamboy presented intelligent music that may have been showcased better in a more intimate setting.  I managed to swing a 5 hour DJ set spanning everything from Kwaito to Lingala to dubstep and more in the main room waiting for Sonny Ji to drive down from an earlier gig in Reading and was amazed when he carried the last hour of the jam with a live mashup of bhangra and funky house - nice stuff.

Ending the summer in true NYC wildstyle, we hit up Manhattan on September 20th and I arranged for a small venue this time right on Houston street, just above the Lower East Side.  New York having been my home for a year between 2004-2005, it was great to be back and I was quite excited for the gig beforehand.... We were at the White Rabbit and though the space was small, I was pretty sure we'd pack it out and attract random passers-by as we were on the ground-level...  Calgary based beatboxer Shamik flew to NYC for the first time to lay down some live beats whilst Sharmaji spun dubplates from his upcoming album (some selections of which were dropped on Annie Mac's show on the BBC earlier that summer) and Shaair + Func surprised the over-capacity audience with a loud electric-guitar laden trip-hoppy set incorporating synths and live vocals.  Towards the end of the night, DJ Spooky and I had an audio-visual jam - I was live remixing his prepared visual set with an array of found footage from WW1 and WW2 with some video clips I shot around Toronto the week before, which Spooky threw down some cuts on the decks.  All round, the NYC Festival installment was an amazing experience - great performances and a smashing audience; everyone was feeling social had a wonderful time.

At the beginning of '07 I had hoped to take the Festival to India at the end of the year and do two gigs; New Delhi and Mumbai.  It was my first trip ever (yes!) to India and I had a blast - unfortunately after much planning things fell apart when I got to New Delhi and our 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice venues all suddenly backed out of their offers of a performance space on December 21st.  Luckily our friend Karsh Kale was in Delhi that same night so I sent a message to people recommending we all just meet there and check out his show, which was an interesting time, though the crowd oddly reminded me of going out in Nairobi when I was 14 (!?  No further comment...).  Though Delhi was a bust I pushed on to Mumbai and we pulled off a massive 2 nights at Blue Frog - a new space thats been put together to support a live music scene in the city, which does a great job despite there just being one sound technician on staff - who worked superheroically to soundcheck 6 acts in just under 2 hours before the gig.  Both nights saw a capacity crowd - unfortunately the venue's vinyl decks hadn't cleared customs yet so I was stuck making do for a 3+hr set from a random spindle of Cds from my office desk (phew) to get people dancing after an amazing set from Tablatronic Violince - who brought electronics, live tabla and violin together for the star set the first night.

Saturday, the second night in Mumbai ended up beautifully wrapping this epic year of events - BlueOrb warmed up the stage with some super smooth mellow beats and as the dinner crowd hit the bottle the 3rd Thought crew got heads nodding, and scratching at times, with some quirky avant-garde minimalist beats from the likes of Autechre, Prefuse 73 and their crew member Sadhanmo.  Its worthy to note that our audience in Mumbai was an interesting mix of people including expectable bolly-types who surely didn't expect IDM that night... By the time 3rd Thought had finished up, people were ansy to shake it down and Tatva Kundalini came on strong with a set merging live Saivite religious vocals with progressive house and nu-school breaks - all highly effected and infectious.  Ending the night on a high note, Jeet Zitar was a conventional band in that they had a drum kit, guitar etc, but their sound was so refreshing; band-leader Jeet Gupta ran his guitar through a series of pedals to delay and echo a variety of his playing styles which included slide!

All in all, this quick review doesn't do justice to the wealth of experience I've gained in hosting this event that has grown from being an experiment in 2006 to suddenly traversing the globe.  However, I can tell you in summation that I am more encouraged than ever before to continue developing our platform for showcasing the wonderful growing international community of artists fusing South Asian tradition with modern aesthetics in electronic music!

Not only is it amazing that somehow I was able to pull off this Festival in 4 cities around the world through 2007, but that audiences and artists at each event were so keen on sharing an experience of this wonderful music.

Look to our podcasts for audio recordings from the Festival installments.