Anyasa aka Anish Sood

Anyasa thus started corresponding with Chakrvarty, who’s Mumbai-based, sending her a couple of demos. He says that she liked what she heard, and he told her to free-style over it with her vocals. “Back then, it was meant to be a conceptual EP,” the artiste tells us. But life clearly had different plans, since that correspondence laid the foundations for Gaya, Anyasa’s debut EP, a product that consciously blends Indian elements into the sonic spectrum of western electronica.

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Anyasa says, “I’ve actually had minimal experience [in Indian classical] and that is something which started changing towards the latter half of last year. I started reading up on it and began understanding ragas better.” He adds that for Indian electronic artistes to break out globally, they need to bring something authentic to the table. “Afro-house is the best example of that,” he says, referring to how the beats of traditional African vocals and instruments have added a distinctive layer to contemporary house music, the sound acting as a sort of soft power that shines a light on the ‘Dark Continent’.

The plan now is to develop a DJ set for nightclub gigs — whenever that scenario will again be allowed — and, apart from that, build a large-scale ensemble with 10 other musicians to perform at a festival stage. This stage will have Indian classical instruments and vocalists, western instruments like the violin, maybe even Rajasthani folk instruments like the sarangi. Who knows? There’s only one thing he knows for sure, the musician says. The bass line from his synthesizer will hold the compositions together. This will be music where the East meets the West. “I can’t say that I am the first person to do it, because I am not,” Anyasa says, explaining how maverick acid-house composer Charanjit Singh was way ahead of his time over 20 years ago.

But the fact is that here is a musician who has gone through a musical transformation during the pandemic, to the extent where we can say, “Anish Sood is dead. Long live Anyasa.”