Music producer Sijya talks about beauty in the abstract and her upcoming EP, ahead of her Bengaluru show

The Bengaluru set is going to be noisy, slow, calming and unnerving at the same time. I’m also playing some demos that I’ve been working on — the new stuff is faster.

I think, it started with the lyrics, “you’re calling, it’s not enough” — that just came intuitively. I try not to be very analytical about any part of this. I’m an overthinker like most of us, but making music is my break from that. The song ends with the lyric, “am I too much?” That’s kind of about the public-facing nature of this role. It’s weird to put yourself out there so much. I’m a very private person. It feels weird to ask for attention.

I’ve always been big on distortion. On my previous EP, I experimented with it on a few tracks, but not all of them. I think I honed in on that with this one. It’s what living feels like and maybe living in Delhi feels like that (laughs). Distortion is sound kind of stretched to its limits — overstretched. That’s how it feels, I suppose.

The artwork is a photo that my dad took. I was a kid when I drew on it and then felt guilty and tried to correct it with a whitener. Those are the markings that you can see. It’s an old photo, repurposed. I had found it recently and stuck it in my room. When my friend Dolorblind (Rohan Sinha) — another talented producer — saw it, he said that it could be a great album art and that was it. The EP’s called Leather & Brass — both materials my family/dad has worked with. So, it all made sense to me and came together.