Image credit: Farah Gherda

45 days to go

Sanaya Ardeshir is freaking out. There’s been some mix up with her visa to the UK, just a day before she’s supposed to leave. She’s slated to open for the mighty Bonobo in Manchester on 4 July but, given this last-minute flub, she’ll have to come back to India, apply for a new visa, and then go back for the gig. After that, she heads over to Berlin for a couple of months. That last bit is for the Border Movement Residency (BMR), for which Sandunes (the name Ardeshir performs under) has been selected, along with FILM — the producer Sanil Sudan, from New Delhi — and Alien Panda Jury (or Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey, from Karachi).

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Image: 9T Antiope

With the advent of affordable recording equipment (and software) and the rapid growth of digital music distribution services such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp, lo-fi (low-fidelity) music has witnessed a phenomenal evolution that has significantly redefined its identity. …

Ramakrishna Puram, located in South West Delhi, was my home away from home for over 10 years. Every day, I would spend the majority of my time on the sprawling campus that housed one of Delhi’s best schools before exploring the small alleys that connected the posh residential colonies occupied by defence and government officials. …

You simply cannot talk about the Sri Lankan music scene without mentioning Asvajit Boyle – musician and co-founder of iconic record label Jambutek and event company Bang Bang. You’ll recognise its symbol – a sour, colourful local fruit known as ‘Jambu’ in Sinhalese. Since its formation in 2014, Jambutek has played a key role in propagating electronic music in Colombo and around, giving its artists a legitimate platform to showcase their work and its audiences a space to learn about and enjoy contemporary sounds through regular workshops, seminars and some of the best parties this side of the world.

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6 years ago, when 24-year-old Rija Yousuf moved back from Saudi Arabia to her hometown Karachi, all she wanted to do was discover the city with fresh ears. Having never grown up in Pakistan, this was more than a homecoming. It was an opportunity to explore a city fraught with violence, with a sense of curiosity and wonder. …

Performance art event Theertha Performance Platform (TPP) brought together various artists from different disciplines at their latest show, centred around the exploration of sound’s ability to transcend its own medium, the event was aptly titled and themed ‘Sound and Crossing(s)’. …

Image credit: Butterflies are Cockroaches with Wings

Ramsha Shakeel. Raania Durrani. Rahema Khan. Natasha Noorani. Natasha Ejaz.

To the uninitiated these are but names, native to the subcontinent, female surely but otherwise unremarkable as names can go, standard appellations for your average Pakistani woman. Of course while their titles may seem average (with all due respect), their occupations most certainly aren’t. …

Border Movement Residency (BMR) is a series of curated experiences that are customised around the individual needs of musicians and aim to create meaningful and relevant creative exchanges between artists in South Asia and Germany. …

Last year we had the pleasure of hosting Berlin based Turkish producer Beste Aydin aka Nene Hatun in India as part of the Border Movement Residency (BMR) initiative. During her 2 month stay in India, Beste travelled around India interacting with the local music community. Check out the video below to get a glimpse into her experience: …

“The taxi driver charges 50.000 to the gates of freedom. It turns out to be a four-exit roundabout.” These words, sprinkled as they are with a restless, persuasive sense of irony, made their way into a piece musician and composer Andreas Spechtl wrote in Tehran, Iran. While there he noticed something odd, which no one around seemed to pay much attention to. Taxi drivers, offering to drive people to the renowned Azadi Square, would simply shout out “Azadi!” at crowds. The word, of course, means “freedom” in Farsi. “Freedom! Freedom!” they were proclaiming. …