It’s a good sign when artistes have a hard time recollecting all of their aliases. This usually means that their approach to music is constantly evolving. Varun Desai is one such musician. In a career spanning over 15 years, his soundscape has traversed from downtempo vibes to improvised synthesizer-driven krautrock.
“I have produced and performed under nine different monikers. It’s not about being pigeonholed into one genre or sound, sometimes, I create an act just for a single show! It’s the sum of many things that I’ve been exposed to. A lot of artistes view projects as a lifetime investment. I don’t,” explains the Kolkata-based individual, who has performed under various aliases in Poland, Switzerland, Portugal, Nepal and the US.
This weekend, Varun is teaming up with the folks behind Llab to bring his one-man hybrid act, 5volts, to Kochi for the very first time.
Input/Output
So, how does being the director of Kolkata Jazz Festival, a label manager, a designer, and a video artist (google ‘Varundo’), translate into creating immersive audio-visual experiences in the old-school techno/ambient spectrum? Well, graduating from an ivy league institution like Purdue with a degree in computer engineering certainly helps.
“5volts wasn’t supposed to be a musical project. It was more about technology and hosting workshops on building your own synthesizers. Yet, its debut release in 2015, Opencluster, got airplay from legends like Laurent Garnier—and it developed into a full-fledged act,” claims the 36-year-old, who’s also the co-founder of music-oriented residency programme called Synthfarm.
The future looks bright for this forward-thinking synthesist, as he’s poised to release a contemporary compilation featuring regional artistes called Peninsula Volume I.
***
Live elements
Also on the lineup for this epic gig are two other prominent names from the underground scene: Obscuit and Spacejams. Kochi’s own Obscuit will churn out some techno with dub-influences and aim at building the vibe without raising the tempo. Meanwhile, Yohann Jamsandekar aka Spacejams—who’s a mainstay in Mumbai’s alternative circuits—will exhibit his superior mixing skills while taking partygoers through an eccentric set of tunes.
***
On June 15.
From 8 pm.
At Avenue Regent.
Tickets: collabo.in
anoop.p@newindianexpress.com
@godsonlymistake