In his new album, Dreamcatcher, Sahej Bakshi aka Dualist Inquiry makes music beyond electronica
For Dreamcatcher, Sahej Bakshi collaborated with Chennai-based F16s and Sohrab Nicholson
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Two minutes into the first listen, you are already hooked onto the new Dualist Inquiry album, Dreamcatcher. It makes you feel as if you are on a train that’s cutting through the fog as it circles a mountain. “I realised I work best in the night, when I am sleepy and dreamy. So, in a poetic way, it’s about catching my dreams. That’s why the name,” says Sahej Bakshi, who as Dualist Inquiry, is one of India’s best-known electronica artistes.
But, this album, he says, was more about making music, and not electronica. This time, the 29-year-old says the process of making the album was vastly different from the time he produced his 2013 album, Doppleganger. “I spent more time being creative and less being technical,” he says, adding, “This time, I knew better and was experienced, so, I decided to just concentrate on making all kinds of music without thinking too much.”
Dreamcatcher is truly a tapestry of “all kinds of music”. To our ears, there is disco, pop and the good-old electronica that one can play all through a road trip. There were collaborations too, with the Chennai-based F16s and another electronica darling, Sohrab Nicholson. “These songs were made when the album didn’t even exist. Sohrab and I go way back — we both went to Doon School — and we just decided to one day record a song over beers,” he laughs, “And the F16s? Well, if I wasn’t doing what I was doing, and had a band, then my sound would be just like the sound that they have.”
The making of the album, he says, was a process of just making music at one go. The cleaning up happened later. He even stopped listening to different music back in April, when he started working on this album full time, as there was no room to get “influenced”.
“I want my music to sound fresh, at least to me. But, in the vibe that the music has, I am influenced by artistes such as DJ Shadow.”
The music making was also an activity of discovery, says Bakshi, as some songs turned out very differently from what he expected.
He talks about Opaque, which is produced much like a typical pop song, heavy on the beats. "Opaque was a very different song for me, thanks to vocalist Kavya Trehan."
Meraki, which we loved, has a world music vibe with vocals that seemed to have a language of its own. “Meraki is just me chopping music samples and vocals. Chop, chop, chop, I went. The vocals are what I recorded here and there — some are the voices of friends, recorded on the phone! And, then it finally turned into what it did.”
Bakshi maybe leading the electronic brigade in India, but he swears that the one thing he does not want to do is climb on the 'trend' bandwagon. “It may not be nice to exclude yourself from something larger, but for me, there has never been an option.” In fact, he is happy that he is being identified with a certain type of sound. “To be associated with a sound is the best thing that an artiste can hope for. Only then, is it all worth it."
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