Wild City

Ever since Bangalore's Eashwar Subramanian started supplementing his white-collar professional life by putting out music nearly 5 years ago, he has done so relentlessly. A regular fixture in the country's ambient music landscape, Eashwar's work sets itself apart from the rest in the genre by creating placating dissipative soundscapes primarily through minimal melodies than abstract textures – naturally borrowing from the cinematic and new age. Initially putting out the work at a staggering pace primarily over SoundCloud, the composer-producer has lately started to consolidate his work with distinct EPs and albums, each featuring a minute but noticeable growth or experiment into the new. For his Wild City mix, Eashwar gives a snapshot of that journey as he curates an all-originals set that connects music all the way from his 2018's 'Ambient Hamlet' with the just-released 'String Theory' – his latest 5-track EP which sees his melodic motifs dissipate between percussive beds of plucked strings (on 'Fireflies')

For almost a year now, M.A.P // A.M.P has explored the intersection of activism and music in South Asia with a variety of platforms, from performance and pirate radio to documentary films and podcasts. One of the biggest efforts from the Goethe-Institut-led multi-pronged project has been its crowdsourced library which presents a repository of socio-political from around the world, spanning several hours' worth of music.  M.A.P // A.M.P gives a glimpse of the library's far-reaching span with our latest Wild City mix. The mix goes from shades of folk music to hip-hop and rock, juxtaposing a myriad of languages and themes. Much like M.A.P // A.M.P's other efforts, especially the documentary series 'Awaaz', it highlights the parallels between voices demanding their right and justice, and the common device of art for people speaking truth to power – irrespective of how different those truths and those powers may be.  For tracklist and more information: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/19916-wild-city-215-m-a-p

Aashish Gupta aka AAGUU, better known for his work as one-half of the duo TechNomads while erstwhile remixing Indian cinema undercuts, curates a love letter to the formative days of house and techno on his Wild City mix.  Assembling deep cuts and familiar sounds from primarily the early 90s, the Bangalore artist taps into the nostalgia for the joyous glossy strands of the two adjacent genres – hovering closer to their Italo-disco roots. High synthetic string lines, plastic-y melodic percussion, sensual vocal samples and flute sounds created in the early days of MIDI instruments take one on a trip down memory (whether lived or imagined) lane, punctuating it just occasionally with the more sombre acid house cuts. Even while throwing in more modern numbers like Ewan McVicar's 'Amnocairn', the connection to the classic evergreen sounds remains with its snappy house piano.  For more information and tracklisting: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/19850-wild-city-214-aaguu

Earlier this year, the Twitter electronic music world chortled around a "Two Guy Theory", which is centred around the observation: "From Bicep to Overmono to Two Shell, the trend of two fellas coming up with elaborate excuses to hang out a lot has been picking up recently. Guys can't just be mates anymore, there has to be a catchy and fresh take on underground dance music involved." Towards the Indian sub-continent, two of the latest purveyors of that theory are Ishaan Gandhi aka Okedo and Rohan Sinha aka Dolorblind. The two music acts, who are likely familiar to anyone with an ear tuned to the electronica talent of New Delhi, have recently joined forces to create an amalgamation of their monikers with Okedolo.  The story goes that the pair had initially met in childhood through their parents' attempts to get their introverted kids to make friends within the neighbourhood. After growing apart and becoming recognised members of the Indian independent music scenes as visual artists, instrumentalists, record e

Few sets invite one into a trance as quickly as Deep Brown's Wild City mix, which instantly whirrs you in with the arpeggios of Nathan Melja's 'Back And Forth'.  A long-standing DJ originally from Kolkata, Ankur Kedia aka Deep Brown gradually lets the arpeggios dissipate into textures focused on percussive numbers and bass melodies tailored for the dancefloor with the techno and house set. Within the incessant thump of the genre that never overbears and never lets down the energy, the selection traverses a range of styles, riding waves of pristine productions to the raw retro energy like the deep cut remix by DJ Smeagzy of Andy Kas' 'Funky Roadway', a particular highlight in the sonic journey. For more information and tracklist: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/19643-wild-city-212-deep-brown

Few in the country have embraced the canon built upon the quick energetic hits of the breakbeat as closely as Smokey, whose hold on the sub-culture has seen her connect the underground deep cuts with popular tastes on stages of increasing magnitude. The Mumbai-based DJ brings a specific modern pop sentimentality-soaked colour of the genre to her Wild City mix.  With soft-centred lyrical tunes, Smokey sets apart her selections from the majority of our Mixes before recontextualising it back for the dancefloor with her staple breakneck rhythms. Riding the high energy of the drum breaks, the mix keeps the intensity steady and carries the ebb and flow by shifting the limelight from vocals, to basslines to chopped up synths and often the minimal elements of drum 'n' bass – interjecting with a breather each time the risk of stagnancy appears on the horizon.  For more information and tracklist: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/19554-wild-city-211-smokey

In the progressive, tech and deep house-dominated nightlife of Sri Lanka, Sunara Jay stands out by instead choosing to explore around the genres of glitch-hop, hip-hop, funk and nu-jazz. Consequently, the DJ and visual artist has been counted upon to represent the island's alternative underground culture with shows in Norway, UK, Germany, Pakistan and India.  With a practice of spanning over a decade of spinning tracks to different types of audiences, Sunara knows well to use the console as an instrument and how a set can elevate a track beyond its standalone value – as she does on her Wild City mix.  Venturing into assortments of glitch over the steady rhythm of house music, the selections are consistently sparse and spacious, assuming an ambient nature even with their softly thumping energy as you settle into the experience. The mercurial basslines keep one hooked while the off-kilter elements feel nothing short of a musical dream, which Sunara plays to by throwing in echoes and other time-based manipulat

Based out of Delhi, Antariksh Records has quietly but strongly left footprints in the global landscape of underground dance music over the years – releasing left-of-centre techno, break, acid house and electro tracks that have found their way onto dancefloors around the world while championing homegrown talents like Marbman, Fr4ctal, Planet Meta and Sepoys. The leftfield approach to dance music gets underlined as the imprint stitches together its repertoire and inspirations with a label mix for Wild City.  Peppered generously with four-on-the-floor cues of Marbman's analog rhythms, Sentient's acid screeches and deeper synth runs of Russian producer Nightdrive and label-head Anandit Sachdev aka AarAv's electro excursions, the set finds its highlights in the extremes of Antariksh Records' timelines – the dreaminess of Egyptian act Wahba's 'Nazra' from the label's first VA compilation and the dense 'Calculated Thoughts' by Mutable Mercury, an artist the label seeks to work with in the future. For tracklist an

Mumbai-based Udai Sharma aka Maddeof manages to pick up the genre of lo-fi house and dust its mess off to contextualize it perfectly for the COVID-19 lockdowns, using the time when the dancefloors were shut to redefine his sound and utilising the style to offer some of the most effective releases of the period which offered familiar rhythms but with more laidback moods befitting to the new and constrained listening habits. The producer, DJ and audio engineer however doesn't primarily stick to his now characteristic style for this Wild City Mix, jumping instead between different guises of house music.  After slipping through some more hard-hitting classic sounds from the more iconic numbers like Paco Osuna's remix of Phuture's 'Acid Track' and rarer cuts picked from the crevices of the web, Maddeof begins to slip into moodier selections post the flamboyant zaniness of Simon Mattson's 'Thug Life'. A tinge of the lo-fi appears with the atmospheric samples on 'Rowdy Boy' by Enzu Leep and Medu, but soon enough th

Electronic act KillZen construct their Wild City mix with only original and unreleased work to introduce their body of work in a free-flowing journey. The duo of Abhishek Chaturvedi and Anannya Gupta musically embody a musical duality in their work, even naming themselves after it. They signify the intense, raging, compulsive and club-friendly part of themselves as 'Kill', and on the other side of the coin put their immersive, placating and introspective work, referred by the 'Zen'. Their nearly 40-minute-long mix for Wild City details how the two seemingly contrasting and opposite sides connect with each other to maintain an ebb and flow of hard-hitting drums and basic but emotively relaxing synth textures. KillZen doesn't just use the mix to introduce their work, but use their work to tie together a fluid sonic journey similar to flowing downriver, sometimes immersed in a calming silence and other times privy to the thrashing of the flow.  For more information: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/18658-wild

Starting as a radio show and a continual chain of song edits by DJ-producer Stalvart John, Dynamite Disco Club has since evolved into event curators championing artists which, as their name suggests, specialise in a motley of disco styles with heavy inclusion of house. The growing collective has an unfailing ability to create a musical oasis at festivals and club nights with curation that focuses solely on providing pure dancefloor fun. A Dynamite Disco Club event sticks closely to the ethos of a dance party in its truest and original sense, throwing in selections of some of the best edits of time and geography traversing unmissable undercuts interluded by the surprise of better-known hits while exhibiting a timeless sense that is free from the concerns of ongoing trends or mixing vanity. Expanding even further, the multi-hyphenate brand has just started a label arm – carrying over its ethos to provide a platform for original music, the first of which arrives in the form of 'Disco Lives' by Italian act Baber

Whether at a late-night slot at a club in South Delhi or a sunny pool-side party, Vijayant Singh as GIRLS NIGHT OUT always cues his selections with a natural sense of the occasion and the energy of his audience, always rendering sweating it out on the dance floor an effortless and compulsive experience. While the ongoing pandemic has kept the local dancefloors empty for most parts, the half-lawyer half-DJ transports the listeners energetically to the clubs with his Wild City mix, adding an extra sense of nostalgia with classic club sounds delivered through surprising and revelatory selections. The mix maintains Vijayant’s intrinsic dynamism inviting the listener in quickly yet smoothly with the subdued bass phrases of Robert Leiner’s ‘Aqua Viva’, then turning up its guttural factor through thumping kick drums and later some breakbeats before diving headlong into house and its surrounding strands of dance music. Keeping a finger on the pulse of his audience, Vijayant lets the listener cool down every once

boxout.fm-regular Jaskaran Rana aka Sleepy Insomniac is known to take to the internet radio every month for his show ‘Lucid Dreams’, inviting the listeners into a psychedelic trip through guises of dance music. The New Delhi-based selector attempts the same on his Wild City mix, kicking things off with the abstract textures of Australian and Canadian electronica forces Roza Terenzi and D. Tiffany with their recent track ‘Melting Ladies’. The mix latches on to the intensifying assault of percussions as they reach the frenzy of breaks on Adam Pits’ ‘Variation 2’, before the pulsating basslines of acid and inspired genres begin to take charge onwards from ‘2 The Dawn’ by Eoin DJ. While mid-way, Russian act Maruwa’s ‘Mercurial Edge’ offers a brief respite from the engulfing energy of the previous selections, Jaskaran begins the crescendo of intensity yet again, consolidating his most disjointed selections for the listeners who brave to stay on till the end.  Consequently, Jaskaran’s Wild City mix is a rollercoa

As we try to differentiate our mix curation with the inclusion of our first mix from a label instead of it being representative of a single individual, none felt as unique in that sub-category as Amarrass Records. Started by Ankur Malhotra and Ashutosh Sharma in 2009, the label, management, booking and vinyl pressing agency stood apart from most of the music industry, which was looking at the West-imported strands of music modern Indian culture, by turning its focus towards the 21st-century face of India’s traditional arts that had been pushed further into the fringes. Highlighting that very face in all its variety, the label has stitched together works from its artists and events for their Wild City mix. The selections make the case that even the traditional arts aren’t without modern adventures as Amarrass’ early signing the late Padma Shri award-winner Kamaicha-player Sakar Khan conjures a wall of lute’s screeching, reminiscent of Steve Reich with ‘Train No. 2’. The contemporary re-contextualisation

Aalhad Joshi aka Marbman makes a case for taking dance music to the energy of its early roots when the genre wasn’t replete with as much explicit seriousness, but he does so with modern selections on his Wild City mix. Holding onto a penchant of fun-filled vocal refrains – as he does on his productions, the most recent of which ‘Class’ released on the Portuguese label No, She Doesn’t – the Mumbai-based producer ties together works of the likes of Four Tet, Cignol, Ilana Byrne, L Major and Admo, dipping in and out of a house-based selection to stay rhythmically dynamic. A third way in, Joshi drops the vocal refrains in favour of more atmospheric numbers, immersing the listener in distant textures while the pulsating drums keep intimate company before returning into the mix’s formative mood with DJ Gigolo and Kev Koko’s trance/electro number ‘Papi’ – all the while maintaining a leisurely mood without relenting the tempo or intensity. For more information: https://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/18278-wild-city-202

Among the many styles of DJs, some selectors rely on the quality of their selections to create the mood while others make the case of how mixing equates with performances by “traditional” instrumentalists – where entire sets come together cohesively akin to a single song, constructed with a zoomed-out vision by meticulously combining isolated, sometimes morphed, phrases and sections like individual musical notes. Anhad Khanna makes a similar case with his Wild City mix as his new moniker Sublime Sound, which he debuted recently with the EP ‘Final Call’. Take for instance, how a repeated phrase from Boyard’s ‘Interstellar Express’ merely interludes the transition from Wayward’s ‘Back To The Old Days’ and Baby Rollen’s ‘Swimming with Dolphins’, never fully coming through itself but only adding as a part of the sum to create an entirely new composition which utilises the three tracks. Khanna doesn’t just stitch together selections but creates a performance out of his mix, sometimes using the squelching arpeggi

As we reached the milestone of hosting our 200th mix, few artists felt as befitting as Discostan. The outfit started as a personal endeavour of Hyderabad-born and Los Angeles-based Arshia Haq, who was inspired by her own decentralised idea of a “homeland” as a modern-day immigrant in a globalised world, to carve a unique space on the dancefloor for a consolidated decolonised musical identity of South Asian, West Asia and North Africa uniting it with all its shared sense of heritage, trauma, struggle and achievement. Transforming soon into a collective and later also into a label, with Jeremy Loudenback joining Haq at the helm, Discostan turned into a space for community-building among the brown diaspora and a go-to for radio shows and platforms to highlight and discover the canon of disco often overlooked by western lenses. Imagining the “past, present, and future soundtracks from Beirut to Bangkok via Bombay” the collective and label offers a counter approach to the colonial-mindset curation that birthed

Few individuals can be ascribed the descriptor “musical polymath” as justifiably as Natasha Noorani. A singer-songwriter, playback singer, producer, voiceover artist and ethnomusicologist, the Lahore-born artist felt perfect for our 199th mix when we found ourselves enjoying her collaborative NTS Mix with Discostaan where she displayed her musicality as ‘Peshkash’, her project through which she is highlighting and archiving sound art and oral narratives of 20th century Pakistan.  However, it is the country’s indie scene which Natasha is synonymous with – fully ingrained in its legacy as the co-founder of Lahore Music Meet, the annual event which not only saves space for Pakistan’s alternative music but has a reputation for bringing to limelight some of its budding members. Natasha carries the same approach to her Wild City mix, highlighting the canon of the country’s predominantly-independent music.  Latching herself to that theme, she gives regard to the style of her selections only in the aspect of making

Over his 5 years in Bath, primarily as a student, Saumya Masrani, who chose his last name as his moniker, involved himself in his immediate British electronic music scene, becoming the resident DJ for local promoters Origin Sounds. Subsequently, the Mumbai-born UK-based talent found the opportunity to open for the likes of Scuba, Or:la and DJ Stingray as JUKEBOXX, and later followed the trail to his hometown with support slots for Cinnaman and Lilly Palmer. All the nights of partying seeped into his work as a DJ and earlier this year he showcased the same as a producer with the release of his dark dance track ‘Growling Hunter’. Bringing the same musical knowledge rooted in the British-scene to his Wild City mix, Masrani starts at the disjointed fringes of house and techno and quickly edges into leftfield bass and jungle. There is a pre-headline slot sensibility to the selections which balance atmosphere, with the likes of rRoxymore and Kosh, against energy, through numbers by Cain and Bolam. The presence o

Punjab and Manipur-origin North Londoner Nayana IZ’s (pronounced “eyes”, after her first name which means in eyes in Hindi) trajectory as a solo artist has been nothing short of meteoric. Releasing her debut single ‘how we do’ just at the turn of the year, the rapper, model and multi-instrumentalist dropped a steady drip of singles running up to her EP ‘Smoke & Fly’ and has already found her verses resounded within campaigns for Adidas and soundtrack for FIFA 2021. The driving force behind it all has been the one fresh unique spice that she adds to her deep-seated love for hip-hop. Take for instance, the off-kilter psychedelic breakdown that punctuates the spitfire verses of ‘how we do’ or her Wild City mix which traces a wide variety of modern hip-hop before diverging into its offshoot dance styles and then bringing it back. Brushing by Nigerian artist Odunsi’s track ‘Body Count’, Nayana explores the sonics of the likes of Freddie Gibbs and Lupe Fiasco before bringing the mix to her current base, throwin