Chennai Calling: IndiEarth At The Park
Loop machines. Bass drops. Stand up comedy. Cocktails aplenty. Sweaty dance floors. Music till way past our bedtimes.
IndiEarth has joined hands with The Park Chennai to create IndiEarth At The Park – a brand new musical property that will feature an eclectic variety of Indian and international independent musicians. The launch this past Saturday featured back to back high energy performances by Sidd Coutto and Bay Beat Collective (BBC). The aim of the nights is to add a splash of colour and diversity to Chennai’s musical landscape, while simultaneously providing a creative space where independent artists can have their voices heard.
Sidd Coutto
Singer/songwriter/loop master Sidd Coutto kicked off the night weaving some loopy magic with several instruments and several quirky ideas – making sure to include in his act brief spurts of comedy, and audience inputs on which tracks to play. “I had a great time!” said Sidd, “The audience seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. The hosts were great and The Park is cool”.
Sidd’s interactive performance took the audience on a trip to different sonic spaces – from adrenaline fueled power packed crowd pleasers, to toned down mellow ‘straight from the heart’ songs that made the ladies in the audience blush and swoon in alcohol fueled adulation. A few tracks from Sidd’s solo album Sunny Side Up were included in his set list, as well as a few from his band Tough On Tobacco.
“The looper act allows me to fully express myself musically on my own and I have a whole bunch of musical options that I can pick on the fly. It makes it all very interesting and challenging to me”, said Sidd, who was looking forward to playing for the first time in Chennai as a solo artist, “over the years I’ve found that the world is full of so many amazing artistes who do such amazing things musically. It’s getting harder and harder to stand out everyday. With my looper act, I hope to have something absolutely unique that no one else can do as well”.
Bay Beat Collective aka Kris Correya and Sohail Arora were next to take to the stage and burn it up with a bass heavy high adrenaline set. The act has toured extensively around Asia and Europe collaborating with renowned names in the electronic and bass music circuit. “BBC plays electronic dance music with emphasis on bass genres like Drum & Bass, Dub & Dubstep,” said Sohail, “We have been pushing Bass heavy music in India for 5 years now. The set at Chennai was basically a walkthrough the various styles of Bass including some of our own music”.
The dance floor filled up faster than you could say filthy glitch and lasted into the wee hours of the morning – a luxury the city of Chennai has over others, allowing venues to stay open late and DJs to play extended sets and experiment with different sounds in one night. “It was a great experience”, said Sohail after the show, “Chennai has massive potential but lacks exposure to newer forms of dance music as they are heavily into techno and house overall. So Saturday was a step in the right direction and we need a lot more of such nights in order to push alternative sounds in Chennai. We had a wonderful time and I think the response was very satisfying overall!”
Bay Beat Collective
After a successful launch, the next edition will take place in February 2014 – featuring another set of talented indie artists who we will be revealing shortly, so sit tight and stay tuned! In the meantime, check out all the mad pictures of the launch night right here.
See you folks at the next IndiEarth At The Park!
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Leave a Reply