A visceral connection

'Glocal' music maker Akshai Sarin is set to release his first major EDM album on Tiesto's Black Hole Recordings early next year. He talks to Zahra Khanon why music makes his world go round
Depending on who you ask, Akshai Sarin is either the new poster boy of Indian electronica or just another good-looking pretender populating the creative firmament of Mumbai.Admittedly, while the noise around him is still an underground buzz, it's one with potential to get louder.
Sample this: Even though his debut album Soundscapesreleased when he was just 16, Akshai's first mainstream album Connectedis set for worldwide release on Dutch heavyweight Tiesto's label Black Hole Recordings in January 2012. He's also recently played at the Exit Festival in Serbia, a four-day event near the Danube river, where over 2.5 million revelers relentlessly party across 20 different stages, covering every genre from Metal to Reggae, with artists including Arcade Fire, Deadmau5, Magnetic Man, Jamiroquai, MIA and Portishead. His collaboration with Russian Trace duo Moonbeam on a track called Elephant Ride, the video for which was shot outside Dadar Station and an under-construction building, last year is due to hit a major international music channel in the country any week now. Whatever the hype (or lack thereof), there's a lot bubbling beneath the surface.
A complex bundle of both confidence and humility, Akshai wears the hats of composer, producer and performer with the ease of a seasoned pro. A formally trained musician, he learnt the tabla when he was eight apart from taking piano lessons, before going on to study at the London School of Music. "Creating music has always been a part of my life. I've been making music for a really long time. When I released Soundscapes, it was like Buddha Bar but way before Buddha Bar. It's something I take pride in, I guess. The album was a digital release and I realised the power of technology when people started ordering it from as far off as Austria and Bosnia."
While in London, Akshai also played at the 2005 Glastonbury Music Festival and even tried his hand at DJ'ing before giving it up two years ago to focus on making original music. "I started playing live gigs in 2007 and performed at the Singapore F1 Rocks event two years in a row alongside artists like Beyonce, The Black Eyed Peas, N.E.R.D, Empire of the Sun and The Chemical Brothers. One of the most interesting gigs I played at though was in Bangalore, for the silver jubilee celebrations of the Art of Living Foundation in 2006," he says.
Ermcome again? He grins when he says, "There were nearly 800,000 people at the Jakkur airfield, where I performed a remix of the theme song Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning 'one world, one family'. I got on stage with just a laptop and keyboard and saw a sea of people in front of me, including Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, dadas, dadis, uncles, aunties, kids, tribal people from Chattisgarh, Abdul Kalam, and the presidents of France, Mauritius and Germany. I started to play the chorus and then suddenly kicked into some hardcore breakbeats and heavy basslines and saw people curiously moving in closer and closer. Next thing I know, they were all jumping and dancing around with the happiest looks on their faces! They kept asking for an encore! It was surreal because this was a seriously spiritual audience and Shubha Mudgal had just performed, and then there was me! It's a different high playing for an audience like that. That's when I realised that as long as you keep your music real and the emotion behind it intact, there's no reason why people won't appreciate it."
There's a mystical streak running through the musician and it's apparent when he talks about an album he did for his aunt a meditation instructor called (don't laugh now!) The Ultimate Aha. "We recorded it when I was in still in university, behind a flour mill, on a zero budget. We actually had to record when the mill wasn't running to avoid the sound it generated!" he laughs. "The response we got to that album was phenomenal though. My aunt still gets emails for it 10 years later. It's nice to know that the album you put the least money and the most love and effort into actually reached out to people. Often we're so isolated in our existence that I think what everyone just wants to do whether at a club or at an ashram is connect with other people on a more visceral level. For me, music is a way of connecting with other people." Having preferred to stand outside the mainstream all this while, Akshai confesses, "To be honest, one of the reasons why I haven't released a lot of music is because I'm scared. It's a big part of who I am and I'm afraid of being judged. So I've taken the easy way out so far."
But clearly he's letting go of all that existential angst and plunging head first into the commercial EDM arena with Connected. "I recently found a sheet of paper from when I was on a road trip through the Nevada desert with friends. On it I'd written, 'Must release album next year.' This was in 2004! I think I've been working on this album my whole life!" he exclaims. "It's got collaborations with some big name DJs/ producers like Andy Moore apart from people I've met over the years from Philippines, Germany, the US, Estonia, Russia, Japan. These are connections I made on my travels and that's one of the reasons why I've called the album Connected."
Talking about how he signed on with Black Hole Recordings, Akshai says he'd been in touch with the label since releasing his independent track with MoonBeam on it. "They'd heard of me because I'd also released some stuff on Armin Van Buuren's label Armada Records some four years ago. We finally met in Amsterdam last year and things fell into place. While the album will have a global release through Black Hole, in India I'm going with another major label."
Apart from this, the 29-year-old has another outlet for his twitchy creativity: an independent boutique label called Rebirth Records, which releases only "cool stuff" from the likes of Peter Kruder of Kruder & Dorfmeister. "He's curated an album for us called Rebirth Volume One. Then there's also stuff with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Steve Vai, George Brooks, Shakti Mahavishu Orchestrathat kind of special, limited edition music. We don't even know what sales are like for it. We just give away CDs to a bunch of people we like. It's more of charity project I don't think it makes money!" he laughs.
More of an idiosyncratic postmodern curator of electronic records than he is a DJ, Akshai is also working on a parallel album "that's a lot more me." It's a way of stepping back towards being the kind of musician he clearly sees himself as less of a consensus juggernaut, more of an extraordinarily skilled independent act. "I'm also really interested in doing films. I have a bunch of friends who are filmmakers and I'd like to be part of the process at some point," he says, adding that he's previously worked on the remix of Suraj Hua Madham, which appears on the soundtrack of Karan Johar's 2005 film Kaal. "There's a lot of stuff I want to do like a cultural centre where performing arts can be curated, own a beach resort, a radio station, my own little country perhaps!" he grins, adding, "Everything I've done, I've done on my own. The music I've done has never fit into a particular genre, so I've had to create my own space."
And nothing could be closer to the truth. It's hard to pin Akshai down into a bracket and at the end of it you really don't want to. Sometimes creative people are like that. You have to let them go with the flow and let their journeys define the destination rather than the other way around. After all, the greats have always been the people who give you more than freely of themselves.
zahra.khan@timesgroup.com
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Zahra Khan
Editor - Fashion & Culture
Bombay Times
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Dr DN Road
Mumbai 400 001
Tel: +91 22 66354519