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Robot Koch: Munbir Chawla, who runs The Wild City blog as well as the Magnetic Fields festival, got in touch through my friend Gerriet Schulz, who works for Border Movement, a sub-division of the Goethe Institute. Border Movement runs these music exchange programs between Germany and South Asia, and Gerreit and Munbir had met through a Soundcamp they did together in Delhi.
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The first was at the IndiEarth Festival in Chennai, more like a world music festival, but also pretty open to electronic music. And I ended up doing a production workshop there as well. The second was at Magnetic Fields, which was at the Alsisar Mahal in Rajasthan, about 12 hours from Delhi. The last one was in Mumbai at a club together with V.I.V.E.K. and Engine-Earz, both from the UK.You've said the IndiEarth Festival was weird. How so?
It was in this five star hotel lounge. Which is because in India the liquor licenses are mainly in the hotels, so that means the clubs are all pretty posh places. There isn't a subculture like we have in Berlin of improvised venues and bars. I remember thinking 'There's no way in Hell my stuff is going to work in here'. But it actually turned out to be a really fun set - everybody got into it. People told me afterwards that it wasn't typical for people to start dancing in that place, especially to music they'd never heard before.All the other artists were playing in the lobby and other spots throughout the hotel. I did get to catch this dope artist named Christine Salem from La Réunion. Just two drummers and then her on vocals. World music in a way but super intense and super percussive. I talked to her manager afterwards and told him that this could go off in a club—two crazy percussionists and her singing with so much energy—and everyone dancing in this hotel lobby by the end. It was pretty surreal.
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I've played at a lot of festivals but this has to be one of the most special ones I've ever done, both because of the location and because of the energy. It's in the desert, about a twelve hour drive from Delhi (at least that's how long it took us to get there). It's in this old palace run by a prince who turned it into a hotel, really amazing, like nothing I'd ever seen before. The programming was great, a balance between electronic and non-electronic music and between Indian and European artists. From Europe there was me, V.I.V.E.K, Engine Earz and my friend Sasha, Perera Elsewhere, as well as a couple others from the UK. And then a fair amount of Indian artists I'd never heard of that I got to discover.It was the first time the festival took place, so it wasn't as big as it probably will be in the next couple years—maybe around 700 people or so? But I think it has a good future since a lot of people who went said it was hands down one of the best things they'd ever been to. The energy was all there—it's not even really something I did, I just played my set but the sound was good, they didn't cut costs on the speakers so it was massive, plus I got to play at a peak moment of the festival, so everyone was there.And that was all helped by the festival's promo video, right?
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Magnetic Fields Festival - Teaser from Magnetic Fields Festival on Vimeo.Yes—so this is what made it so perfect. Originally, months and months ago, the organizers made a video of the doorman of the palace dancing to my song "Cloud City." Just to promote the festival in general. This traditional turban-wearing guy name Chaganji, who stands there the whole year guarding the door to the palace. But they got him to dance because he also plays in a traditional Rajasthani band. And the video ended up going viral and being associated with the excitement for Magnetic Fields.So then, right before I performed, Chaganji came out and did the dance again and then I ended up playing "Cloud City" in my set—a lot of people told me later that this was THE festival moment for them, because the song had been built up as the festival anthem, plus we had the guy there to do the dance. That's what I mean that the energy was just locked—it was a really special moment.Tell us about some of the Indian producers you discovered while there.
It was Sandunes on the first day that blew my mind, she's doing some house and garage stuff with swung beats. On the second day I really liked this guy called Curtain Blue, who's somewhere between Apparat and Jon Hopkins, a bit sound track-y, melancholic but really detailed production.There was this really great post-rock band called Until We Last, sort of like This Will Destroy You or Explosions in the Sky but with a twist. All really young unsigned kids from Delhi. This artist Frame By Frame was also cool.
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I got to have a session with the traditional local Rajasthani Chung band that Chaganji was in. These are all village people that literally work in the fields during the day and then perform at the palace at night for visitors. So I just borrowed some mics from the front of house guys and recorded the traditional drums, the flute, and the singing.I also bought this electric tanpura, this box that creates a drone for you to practice a sitar over. Apparently Munbir told me that Modeselektor bought the same box a week before—he promoted their show as well and he told them about it just as much as he told me and they were also like, "We've got to get this box!"
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I've traveled a fair bit but India was one of the places I wasn't sure that I wanted to go. Both because I didn't really know about the music scene there and because what I did know didn't really attract me, like images of full-moon raves in Goa. But when Munbir asked me to play Magnetic Fields and I saw some pictures of this old palace in the desert where it was going to be, I decided I wanted to go find out about it for myself. And it actually turned out to be one of the best parties of my life. It was like that for a lot of stuff there, me learning that India really wasn't what I thought it was in many ways.With 1.2 billion people, it has every music scene you can imagine—even very specialized stuff like this post-rock band Until We Last, who admire Western music and then make their own version of it. And there's all kinds of club music in India. The mainstream is dominated by this Goa beach music with Paul Van Dyk, but there's so much more. Sandunes, for example— she's only played once in Europe, but she gigs around in India—flying to Delhi to play a little club show there, or Absolute Vodka doing an event somewhere at the beach and they'll fly her over to warm up for some bigger DJ. So these people work, they're actually professionally doing it. And I didn't have any idea about that before, I thought our scene was not existent there.
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I think so. Maybe not because of me—when I taught that workshop in Chennai, out of twenty people only one knew who I was. But now they all have my music and they're all writing to me and asking me production questions. Which is definitely cool to inspire people—that's what I thrive on and it's what I want to pass on to others. So I can't say for sure whether there will be a beat scene there, but there's definitely twenty kids in Chennai right now exploring beats!
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Yes actually! I'm moving to Los Angeles in mid-January for a Berlin sabbatical. I've been here 13 winters in a row so it's time to check out the scene somewhere else for a bit—I've got a three-year visa for the US so I'm going to explore what LA and the West Coast has to offer in terms of inspiration, sounds and collaborations. Other than that, my project Robots Don't Sleep has a full length coming out next month, and some artists I've done production and remix work for, like the Pentatones, should see some releases as well.Matt Earp is the DJ and writer Kid Kameleon. He currently lives in Berlin. Follow him on Twitter -@kidkameleon