It’s been a bit since I updated or posted on this blog. But the music has been going on.
As a producer and artist, I like to push myself to create more & explore different styles and aspects of music and break the monotony of sticking to only one particular genre, by producing music in different genres that explore all my influences.
One genre I love getting back to is Boom Bap. You could call it instrumental hip-hop or lofihiphop or jazz hop because they all blur into the same thing but it’s essentially boom bap, because when you’re hitting those pads on your MIDI controller that’s how the flow of the beats go — a boom and a bap.
But those explanations aside, Boom Bap is a genre I’ve explored considerably when I stumbled upon and befriended a musician named Konstantin better known by his stage name ‘DJ Hellblazer’. His ‘Pure Dopeness’ series of beat tapes had a lasting impact on me, this was me in my early twenties grooving to and vibing to the beats that he curated and that I discovered. I was hooked.
Although, he has changed his stage name since to “King Paris” and stopped releasing more volumes of the ‘Pure Dopeness’ series, it was at its core — Boom Bap.
Just Google ‘Pure Dopeness Sinoptic International’, — (thank me later)
So over the past 4 months, I decided to get back to those roots and take a step back from Electronica and work on a Boom Bap LP which had underpinning themes of Bombay city, the city I grew up in.
Bombay — It’s a vibe by itself.
Bombay is very much the New York of India. The parallels are aplenty. It’s a city that’s on the shore of the Arabian Sea, with towering skyscrapers and hotels, and on the flip side home to Asia’s largest slum and where the Indian stock market was founded — just like the Atlantic ocean and Wall Street — except it’s Dalal Street in Bombay.
Bombay is home to the Indian dream, it’s also where the Indian film industry Bollywood calls home and as writers, Gregory David Roberts described in detail in his book ‘Shantaram’ and Suketu Mehta dubbed Bombay in his book — it’s the ‘Maximum City’.
The streets are where the flow of the city are in full force. It’s the vada pav & cutting chai and smokes on the move hustle. It’s home to 21 milllion people and it’s where I was born and raised. I could go on…..
But the music of Bombay is also firmly rooted in jazz and blues. But Boom Bap is the music I bumped & grooved to back in the day while living in the city that was home in my youth, but morphed in meaning for me as a working professional in those early years fresh out of college.
I’ve spent the majority of my life in Bombay and it’s home, and this LP is my tribute to the city in the form of an album which is also close to the nostalgia of the music I was listening to in those formative years. It’s been a while…..
“I wanted to get back to making boom bap/lofihiphop/jazzhop that made for my earlier exploration of the genre with ‘Lost Cinema’ because I went very experimental with ‘Blues by the Bay’. I like to shift from genre to genre & I wanted to get back to just beats & grooves with my own spin on them that make for a smooth listen.”
“This beattape was made with the underpinning theme of #bombaycity or #mumbai (it used to be Bombay when I was growing up) & basically beats that are the heartbeat of the city. The hustle of Bombay, the jazz & blues , the streets which make you dream. I’ve sampled a lot of different sounds & old Hollywood cinema clips, stuff that I watched & heard in my youth & over the years. This beattape is the culmination of all my influences & my love of Boom Bap full of that vibe that is the soul of the genre & just relaxing & chilled beats to listen to. Give it a spin!”
Here’s Vol. 2
And here’s Vol. 1
Words For Reveries 