MUMBAI: After two successful editions of its signature Underground House festival ‘A Day of sLick’ conducted in Bangalore and Pune, it comes to the home of the organisation behind it, Mumbai. And this one promises to be the best and biggest one so far, as revealed by sLick Senior Manager Mustafa Kantawala.
The day long festival will feature the Indian debut of four international electronic acts- Spanish electronic music producer UNER, Swiss deep/tech house DJ Nora En Pure, German DJs Nudisco/G-House act Sharam Jey, and Diynamic’s Magdalena. They are all scheduled to play in India for the first time on 15 March, at ‘A Day of sLick’. Along with the international music acts, there will also be performances by local acts like Kohra, Bullzeye, Priyanjana, One&One, Narcotiq, Ankytrixx, Nina & Malika, Joshi, Kusai, Tasnneem and TBom. For the first time, a True School of Music student will be playing at a music festival- Maulik Shah, in his final at TSM, will open ‘A Day of sLick’ at blueFROG Mumbai.
However, getting these artists to come and perform for the fest took months. Kantawala said, “We started work in full swing back in October last year. It really took that long to get the international artistes to perform for ‘A Day of sLick’. We had to find a common timescale among these artistes and schedule an appropriate day accordingly.” Kantawala also revealed that he will be performing under his stage name Mustafa.
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The day-long festival has had successful runs in Bangalore and Pune, the same places where music festivals that last for more than a day have received tremendous popularity. Commenting on that, Kantawala said, “We did not want to conceptualise music festivals, our primary aim towards forming ‘A Day of sLick’ was to create a day-long boutique showcase.”
When asked whether sLick has a strong marketing campaign for the boutique showcase, he said, “Word of mouth has been our biggest marketing stronghold. The international and local acts have an incredible following, so the digital marketing has also been good.” Expecting a turnout of 2000 people for the upcoming event, plans for other editions of the showcase have also begun. “We had started ideating on the next edition of ‘A Day of sLick’ months ago. The plan is to take the festival to places like Delhi, Hyderabad and other cities. We are planning to conduct the fourth edition in October/November. However, nothing is confirmed for now,” said Kantawala.
Meanwhile, this year onwards, sLick has also put into place an artist management agency after signing artists like Nina & Malika. Also, to commemorate its fourth anniversary, sLick has roped in Canadian electronic psychedelic/house duo BLOND:ISH and Italian electronic music producer and DJ Joseph Capriati to perform in April.
‘A Day of sLick’ will be conducted simultaneously at blueFROG and Café Zoe on 15 March from 4:30 p.m. onwards.
