Down a quiet lane in the fast developing and increasingly dusty district of Borella in Colombo, a small but dedicated collective of musicians spend their days playing, teaching, composing and generally living through music. Operating independently from established bodies for examinations, MusicMatters is a school that emphasizes a practical approach to teaching music that is built upon a firm belief in performance and self-assessment rather than the rigid frameworks of more traditional teaching methods. …

With 2011’s Veracious EP,//orangenoise brought Pakistan’s indie music into a greater public consciousness. Though there were bands and musicians who had been plying their trade before //orangenoise, none of them had coalesced music and ideas as well this four-piece from Karachi. In 2012, //orangenoise brought full circle what they’d started by appearing in an episode of Uth records (a TV programme centred around the idea of giving upcoming musicians time with Gumby, one of Pakistan’s foremost producers). Indie music in Pakistan, with all its electronic and instrumental offshoots, was now firmly in the public consciousness. …

Riding on the success of his debut album “The Grinning, Naked Bunch”, Delhi based Hashback Hashish has released an EP of remixes. Released seven months back, the album received favorable feedback and served as a good culmination of the reputation of tightly produced live sets he had been building up. Titled “Crystalline Nightmares – Remixes EP”, the latest EP picks up on a track from the debut album which has in turn been remixed by four musicians with diverse musical inclinations and who are spread across the globe. …

Bombay bred ‘scene’ folk won’t recognize Sandunes (Sanaya Ardeshir) in her new avatar. She’s traded in her black and white keys for faders and knobs, jazz solos for old-school synths and a seated stool posture for an adorable little two-step jig behind the console. The only thing that remains the same is the hard-focussed determination to make her place in music–everything else melts away. …

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Technology like everything else, depreciates. In this clandestine apartment, this dulling presence of mind, my computer screen shifts shape and form. This is usually an invitation to better prospects; an indication that we’ve fallen to the wayside in this, the year of our machine. …

Jeff Mills of Sri Lanka? Montreal-based Sarath Pereira delivers a mix that certainly comes close. Born in Maho in Sri Lanka and raised in Lyon in France, Sarath started working in a record shop at the age of 15 and has been surrounded by vinyl ever since. …

There’s a theme to begin with here, and we’ll string it along the letter C.

C is for Carnival and for Celebration, a fun time that is being had by all – in Mumbai, and in Maharashtra, and over mental mini-pilgrimages countrywide for years. C is for Cliché, one that traces over generations of Bollywood ritualism and riot aftermaths and minority census studies – this is also the C of Communal unity. And C is for the Chaturthi of our elephant god, which ends in the Ganesh Visarjan (the highly amped procession leading to the immersion of the Ganesh idol in a water body) which is the one we’ve been getting at. …

Helmed by Mumbai based Sky Rabbit lead guitarist Rahul Nadkarni, SnowShoe is a new project that has been built from scratches and sounds collected over the years. A two-piece live outfit that also features fellow Sky Rabbit member Harsh Karangale on drums, their shows display an irresistible clash of samplers, loops and live instruments. …

Read the music blogs, pick up a trendy magazine, or visit Soundcloud, and you’ll find it waiting for you. But although there seems to be a consensus that we’re living in the trap moment, there’s much less accord on what, exactly, trap is. …

Tritha’s promotional materials refer to her music as “hindustani trip-hop”, and you can’t fault her for the perhaps too reductive description. We all need an easy to digest tagline, and “franco-madrasi-bengal-electro-folk” hardly rolls off of the tongue. …