MUMBAI: In association with Mixtape and Unmute, the band ‘Else If’ recently made its Mumbai debut on 4 November 2016 at antiSOCIAL.
In the midst of some dope tunes of Fuzzy Logic and Worms’ Cottage, Else If made its presence grandiose with some ‘genre-free’ melody.
The Delhi-based band is an amalgamation of odd point signatures, tempo and progression. It has a fine blend of layered natural and twisted soundscapes which are larger than grooves. Arjun and Puneesh spoke to Radioandmusic.com about their collaboration, musical course of action, their ideas of incorporating sound to achieve something in this rising and falling market and their current jam.
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Puneesh states, “We started writing music together around three years ago and we weren’t really sure where the music was heading. We were just making music because it was fun. At the same time, Arjun agrees. “Random ideas lead to random sounds, and these random sounds became random tracks. It was almost a year or maybe even more of dabbling with these random bouts of randomness that we decided to start working on something that wasn’t random.”
For the uninitiated, Arjun has been in the electronic music scene for quite some time. He has played with the now defunct live techno act Jalebee Cartel for a decade. Also, he makes video games at his game studio SuperSike Games. On the other hand, Puneesh who loves ice cream and Crax, sometimes together, is one-half of LabRat Studios where they do a whole bunch of interesting things with sound. They both said that they waste a lot of time pretending to be other people in public, just for kicks.
“I was quite bored with the regular 4/4 grooves and straight music ideas. I met Puneesh and we shared some music ideas with each other and the experiments began,” said Arjun on talking about their collaboration and experimental music.
Explaining the same, Puneesh added, “These experiments included working with soundscapes, music instruments and general randomness on the computer’s DAW. Initially, we didn’t have any specific sound or style so to speak. We would just play a note on the guitar, bass or synth and see what we could turn that into.”
While describing their ‘genre-free’ music both of them said, they think that both of them have some interesting tastes in music. And they agreed from the start that they wouldn’t stick to a preset formula or particular style.
“We’d just make music that feels and sounds good to us. I think apart from a definitive mood there isn’t too much similar between any of our songs,” said Arjun.
Commenting on the same, one-half of the duo Puneesh added, “Also, the fact that we never stick to any particular style or method of songwriting, it gives us the freedom to go anywhere while writing music, or writing a particular phrase inside a song. It’s nice to not limit yourself.”
On their musical course of action, Arjun said that they sometimes work together on an idea, or individually and they take each song as an idea and work on it.
“Blending these together in a set sometimes becomes really difficult, though,” added Arjun.
Puneesh shared that gigs help them a lot when it comes to fusing things altogether. While they are working on their own, they end up accumulating a lot of unfinished ideas, and then as they get closer to playing a gig, they end up working together towards turning these ideas into songs.
They have agreed that as commercial music rules in India, one needs to accept this fact. They also believe that there are so many people not just in our country but also globally that like listening to newer, more interesting forms of music keeps us going.
“Frankly, we don’t look at music as a source of money, it’s more a source of satisfaction,” said both of them.
While we asked them whether they feel happy and hopeful about the approach of electronic music they said the electronic music that people tend to follow these days is the more commercial form. “I guess that is just the natural way these things evolve. It would be amazing if people playing different styles of music are appreciated more, especially live musicians, added Arjun.
Puneesh added “I strongly feel that an artist must not underestimate their audience. This is something I learnt a few months after we started playing. Initially, the idea of moving between different musical time signatures felt a little challenging, but later it was also very fulfilling when people came and appreciated the fact that we do this.”
Presented by Mixtape and in association with UnMute, Gently Altered and Consolidate, Fuzzy Logic, Worms’ Cottage, and Else If will perform on 4 November 2016 at antiSOCIAL, Khar Mumbai.
Listen to the snippet of their first track ‘Drip’ that they produced together.
