“In some weird way, it (artwork) ties into the EP as well, because there are a lot of different influences, like I’ve straight up taken something out of context from Aphex Twin. I’m a big fan. One of the tracks (‘one7two’) has an Aphex riff that I’ve just made my own, basically,” says Shantam.
Across five tracks, Shantam – who has been a DJ and producer for more than a decade in cities like New Delhi and now lives in Goa – traverses IDM, drum and bass and breaks to conjure what Noosphere’s press release describes as a “fuzzy, delightfully weird and energetic creature of questionable origin.”
Shantam
© Shantam
Visually, that’s represented with the artwork that Shantam created on a 3D modelling software called Blender. The artist says, “I started using it and it’s got like a really active community of people who share tutorials and resources and stuff like that. So I kind of taught myself over the pandemic from YouTube and started by messing around with it […] it’s quite technical in some ways, but it’s great fun.”
Shantam Khanna led synth work and drum machines for the electronic band Fopchu not too long ago, and while they’re no longer active, he’s been jamming with guitarist Elvis Lobo and keyboardist/organist Stefan Kaye out of Goa. To him, the jam band reflects the freedom and openness that Goa’s music scene has offered which he didn’t find in many other places.
He says about the project, “We get on stage and we just jam, where it can go anywhere. It can be a slow jam or some fast drum and bass kind of stuff, so it’s really nice in that sense. I don’t think this could have happened in Delhi, at least not so organically.”
Shantam
© Shantam
The artist has also been dabbling in techno from time to time in his sets, which is something he was avoiding for some time but leaned into it and now feels it’s “rewarding” and pays well too.
The EP bleep, however, indulges his love for IDM, breaks and “mangling drum machines” as he puts it. He picked tracks from his sets (“95% of the stuff I make has actually never gotten released,” he says) and sent it to Noosphere, especially encouraged by how good they sounded on a big speaker system at Magnetic Fields Festival in Rajasthan in 2022.
He specifically recalls bleep’s opening track ‘uuhhm’ and ‘twoforty’ as spurring him into action about releasing studio cuts of the songs. Ask him about tracks like ‘fcx’ and Shantam says broadly that the EP is majorly a “condensation and regurgitation of all the stuff” he’s been listening to.
He name-checks Aphex Twin again, as well as Squarepusher, and adds that his process has been gauging such influences and then setting off on his own path as producer. “There’s a play of opposites – vast empty spaces, melodic movements that quickly change into super meticulous drum programming that gets really frenzied,” he says. When you reach the end of the bleep EP, there’s ‘twoforty’ with exactly the kind of frenzy that Shantam refers to. “That’s just like too much coffee and being like, ‘How I can f*ck these drums up,” he says with a laugh.
Shantam
© Shantam
Going with Noosphere – who will next release the EP New Wave Synthesis by Instinct and Flow Motion EP by Sacred Seeds in December – was mostly a matter of having a personal rapport for Shantam. He’s blunt in saying that realistically, he’s making no money off a release but is quick to add an exception to the norm.
“The only release I’ve ever done that I’ve gotten paid for was with this label based out of New York called Ceramic Records. They did like a vinyl press [of his EP 3fer-disco in 2021]. And that was the only deal that I did where I got an advance payment. It wasn’t a crazy amount but it was the only time somebody actually gave me cash for my music,” Shantam explains.
In the case of bleep, Shantam had longstanding support in Arnav Singhal and Tre Munroe whenever he’d share music with them.
“We’ve done a couple of releases before, so it’s nice to work with people who can share your vibe in some way,” Shantam says.
They might just set up a launch night for bleep EP sometime in December. Shantam says he also has a live setup. “I play with samplers and my computer on this kind of material. It’s not as intricate and frenzied as this [EP], but it’s my version of breaks and stuff,” he adds.