Fresh Water is a new compilation series that we are launching to mark 5 years of our label. We wanted to celebrate it by putting out more music between our full-length releases without worrying too much about traditional release formats or the ancillary work that goes with it.
Some of the songs within are indicators for the tangents our artists are on, others are one-off experiments, sketches and some leftovers from the back catalogue.
Vol. 1 features music by Kambalalala, Disco Puppet, zthtx, YNZN.P and _RHL.
The artwork was illustrated by Shoumik Biswas and designed by Suren Makkar
The 12 track FRNDS & FMLY ’20 offers a broader sonic palette compared to our first compilation (F&F’16) cutting through genres, mood and intent. While the label regulars follow their own tangents, new recruits in Flekke, Jevan Antony, Akrti and Murane Athma x Aniruddha Prabhu further expand the sound of Consolidate.
The very first draft of this compilation was being workshopped by the end of June, 2019. The world was in a precarious place then too, but by the time we had arrived at an LP ready for release it was being plunged headfirst into a new era. The abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, followed by the attempted re-writing of India’s citizenship laws had spawned the first sustained wave of protests in India since Prime Minister Modi and his NDA government had assumed power in 2014.
So we stayed its release, feeling that maybe this was not the moment for a compilation that dwelt so heavily on the interior lives of artists. Then, before any of us could catch our breath, the new year brought in its own fresh wave of disasters and a global pandemic. Now, as we watch the shock doctrine be applied in its crudest form all around us, the quaintness of this compilation has taken on new meaning.
What started as an exciting first step in our plans for the new decade is now a time capsule. Those moments in the album that seemed wary of the future now sound like moments of premonition. The silly and fun parts are welcome reprieve to the mood of the planet nowadays. But the album is underscored by an unawareness of just how much the world was going to change.
Aranyer Dinratri (Disco Puppet’s third full-length album) gets its name from the 1970 film by Satyajit Ray. Biswas first saw the film in 2016, after which he began to take an active interest in Ray’s works. These movies became a window into his personal history and art.
He began to understand his attraction to seemingly insignificant details of daily life, the way people interact and the longing for human contact. Although his work has always explored these themes, in this album, they become his main point of focus.
Aranyer Dinratri runs 40 minutes and is presented in a stream of consciousness format. The tracks flow into one another, weaving a narrative of search, discovery and acceptance. Like most of his previous work, the album remains sonically adventurous, contrasting assiduously crafted moments of tenderness with outright abrasion. There are playful moments too, courtesy Biswas’s battered Casio SA47. The toy keyboard is accompanied by samples, tape machine artefacts and saturated 808s - building on Shoumik’s familiar yet ever evolving sound palette.
To support the album, Disco Puppet will be touring 3 cities in October –
Above the Habitat, Bombay 4th October
The Piano Man, Gurgaon 11th October
Fandom At Gilly's Redefined, Bangalore 12th Oct
Blindnight aka Suren Makkar has been closely associated with Consolidate in various capacities for a few years now: a designer, occasional performer, and a collaborator.
Where is the fire? is his first release for the label.
The EP at its core is a beat tape, rough around the edges, built on sample driven instrumental hip-hop aesthetics, where the coherent and absurd go hand in hand, the rigid and free collide, humour and meditation take turns to upstage each other. Blindnight’s choice of sounds and samples are always those that have vocal character. Manic laughter in ‘Everybody likes to die sometimes’ paints the city at night into a hardboiled soundscape. ‘Magic maybe’ is made complete with a catlike femme fatale.
Makkar also enjoys creating contrast that lead to absurd situations. Ustad Kitty’s social commentary on beauty culture in ‘Fruity Pie’ is complimented by the easter egg that is bit of the theme from Bojack Horseman. The stretched out scream juxtaposing the baby’s gurgle in ‘Fever’ (which features Disco Puppet’s ghostly vocals) has a sense of horror as well as comedy.
Where is the Fire? sounds like a series of handmade ransom notes made out of cut out letters from different magazines and newspapers. Makkar employs a visual, almost collage-like approach to making music where the designer and the producer merge, break boundaries and even compromise. As Suren jumps from motif to motif, the common thread becomes Makkar’s ability to displace sounds from the musical and sonic contexts - creating a soundtrack that sounds like a post 3AM youtube binge.
Blindnight Links
www.facebook.com/blindnight800
soundcloud.com/blindnight800
www.instagram.com/makkarman
Disco Puppet's new full length record, Princess This, is a follow up to three stellar releases, Astronot, Spring and I’m Going Home. Written during and shortly after his recent tour of China, the new album is a fitting follow up to his previous work. It builds on his signature aesthetic and refuses to succumb to genre restrictions and formulas. But the LP is also a departure, embracing some of the most recognisable sounds of pop music (808s, autotune, gated drums) to achieve its ends.
Biswas spikes this pop soundscape with elements that lie on the fringes of acceptable standards of fidelity - processed and distorted drums, super saturated recordings and some very choice samples. The resulting high-contrast palette is perfect for the interplay of restraint and abrasion that run through the album.
Rajan Shrestha is a Kathmandu based artist, primarily known as the bass guitarist of post-rock act Jindabaad. He is also one half of Anaasir, a collaborative project with Pakistani electronic musician Alien Panda Jury.
Phatcowlee is Rajan Shrestha’s solo electronic project where he infuses samples and LA beat sensibilities with deeply personal lyricism to create songs that veer into the ethereal. Cinema - his debut EP - is an excellent example of this distinct sound – in it, a love for Nepali film music and lo-fi hip-hop is combined with Rajan’s songwriting sensibilities that draw from Adhunik Nepali Music.
“Accidentally tuning into TV Filmy, a local channel that broadcasts classic Nepali movies led me to reminisce about Gitaanjali: a national TV program of the 90s that played popular Nepali film songs. I became nostalgic, and this EP is a result of just that.”
Most of the songs in Cinema begin with samples from classic Nepali films (Mayalu and Chino) before they evolve into rhythms, textures and voices of their own. The result is a curious interaction between Rajan’s nostalgia for the past and his current experiments with song construction, which are tinged with modern sensibilities and methods. There is a raw directness to his chosen samples which belies the unexpected sonic territory the songs go on to explore, where the artist’s inspiration and his reaction to it, take the lead.
Though very recognisably a product of the same mind that wrote Tourguide Impostor and Standing Feathers, Worms’ Cottage’ new EP To Each Their Own finds the Bangalore-based electronic artist exploring new sonic territories. The chaotic soundscapes, the beat driven production and the voice centric songs that marked his earlier records give way to a more controlled and deliberate effort - one that sounds more articulate, resolute and organic.
Aerate Sound is a Bangalore based A/V duo made up of producer Joe Panicker and visual artist Naquash known for merging sample driven hip-hop/beat music with immersive cinematic elements.
Only For External, in their owns words, is an attempt to capture the space they live in. In the album, Aerate Sound employ abstract sonic patterns, beat centric instrumentation, folk samples and field recordings to create a layered soundtrack that transitions effortlessly through disparate sounds, textures, structures and moods.
The 9 track album features collaborations with Bangalore-based MC Smokey the Ghost and The Burning Deck, adding depth and diversity to Aerate Sound’s debut effort.
The places one lives in invariably lend contrast to each other. A day in Aniruddh Menon's life would start with running late for school in the backwaters of Tripunithura, Kochi, followed by lazy afternoons spent on farmland in Elapulli, Palakkad. Then, a return to a stubbornly medium-sized old villa in Satwa, Dubai that houses 8 families from across India, Pakistan and the Philippines. The day would likely end with a post-dinner party in SFS Colony, Yelahanka - one that's doomed to be shut down by neighbors calling the police.
His debut LP Lovesongs, a follow up to 2014 EP Another Summer, is this story told through obscure samples and lo-fi beats. It builds on the unique sonic pallette that Aniruddh has created over the years as the producer of electronic/acoustic act Machli, and through his solo releases. In Lovesongs, he attempts to weave a soundscape that acknowledges the sounds he grew up around without succumbing to nostalgia. The album features a number of collaborators, from Machli bandmate Pardafash to Disco Puppet, Ustad Kitty and Benkii, each helping make the record a little more personal.
Spring, Disco Puppet’s new EP is characterised by its irreverence towards the stylistic and procedural dictates of genres and their purists. This stems partly from ideology, but mostly from a tendency to get easily bored. But cerebral as his work is, he matches it with heart. His experiments, though nearly scientific in their rigour, are always essentially human. They come from a place of empathy and vulnerability, and perhaps because of this, they are surprisingly moving.
Biswas now further into adulthood, is more skilled, more confident and has more to say. Possibly because of this, he is looking further back. With Spring, he has gathered sounds that remind him of his childhood, and arranged them to soundtrack the sensation of almost remembering something – of memories like words at the tip of one's tongue.
He says: “In Spring, I have tried to capture my childhood. Both with the sounds used and the feelings the songs evoke. You know how sometimes, there's a word in the pit of your stomach - you know it, but it's not really coming to you. It's like that."
Standing Feathers is Worms’ Cottage’s sophomore album. The producer and songwriter describes this collection as the 'night' following the 'evening record' that his first LP, Tourguide Impostor was.
It is an apt analogy – in comparison to his last LP, Standing Feathers is audibly darker and more intimate. Stylistically and lyrically, the work is sensual, with a track list that feels more homogenous than his previous releases. It is also a clearer statement of his sonic palette and sensibilities as a writer, pulling at the some of the most promising threads from his earlier work to arrive at an unlit, cosy yet unsettling place where whispers are loud enough to carry.
FRNDS & FMLY 2016 has accidentally become our first full length release, which is something we could not be happier about. Initially planned as a two-track new years' EP, we now have eight great tracks by some of the most fun and original artists/producers we know.
As always, the Bangalore alternative scene is where the bulk of the music comes from; _RHL, Disco Puppet, Oceantied, Worm's Cottage and our newest partners Aerate Sound all contribute fresh cuts. The music is vivid, sticky and as much a cross section of the nation's underground aesthetics as ever. The rest of the collection spans other metropolises. While Pardafash, having developed her own visceral sonic landscape, writes us from Delhi, Zubin and Aniruddh tell us diaspora stories from Dubai.
Complete as the compilation is, FRNDS & FMLY’16 is also a sampler for what the year holds. It contains first listens of tracks from upcoming LPs by Disco Puppet and Worm's Cottage. Besides their contributions to this album, _RHL and Aniruddh - co-founders of Consolidate - will also be putting out longer listens in the coming months.
