MUMBAI: Two filter coffee drinkers- Swarupa Ananth and Shriram Sampath- came together almost seven years ago to celebrate ethnotronic music. In the past year and a half, the band has been able to gain respect and recognition around the world for its traditional and electronic sounds.
Filter Coffee’s percussionist Ananth said, “It has been a good one and half year. We have been touring continuously. Last year, it started in July with our UK tour and from the time we have been doing non-stop music.” In 2013, the band performed for a number of international gigs including their FCUK (Filter Coffee UK) Tour 2013, The BaliSpirit Festival (Indonesia), Culture day at The Kuala Lumpur Center (Malaysia) and No Black Tie (Kuala Lumpur).
The duo has also played at blueFROG for a cause ‘Dharavi Rocks’ and also NM College’s fest ‘Umang 2014’. Flautist Sampath added, “We played at IndiEarth at The Park, Chennai; four times at blueFROG; a couple of gigs in Jaipur and now we are back from our UK tour. We reached on the day we had to perform for the Dharavi Rock Concert. We played at the ‘Glastonbury Festival’ which was a fantastic experience. It has been good so far and we hope this continues.”
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Until recently, both of them held full-time jobs. Ananth said, “It was just two and a half years ago that we decided to quit our jobs and become full-time musicians. This is now our full-time job.”Both of them dabbled with many genres, and sounds before finally deciding to take up ethnotronic.
Ananth and Sampath have been collaborating with other artistes on various occasions during live gigs, so they hope to get in touch with artistes they collaborated with in the past for their next release. “For the EP or album, we could be collaborating with singers, rappers, visual artistes, drummers or instrumentalists. We are planning an EP or an album,” said Ananth. Should they plan an EP, it will have four tracks and it will be out in couple of months.
Sampath also added, “Two of us will only remain the core band but we always collaborate with other artistes. We might not have any new members joining the band. Two is a good number because managing and travelling is much easier.”
