Exclusive Stream: Indian Producer WCKiD and Outshades’ Shimmering Love Song ‘Eternity’
18-year-old beatsmith Bharat Kumar aka WCKiD hails from the town of Tundla, near Agra and has two more releases this year
Tundla, Uttar Pradesh-based producer WCKiD aka Bharat Kumar. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
As an adolescent in the town of Tundla (about 30 kilometres from Agra), Bharat Kumar was an avid gamer, especially into first-person shooter Far Cry 3. “It had a mission during which the background soundtrack was [American dubstep DJ-producer] Skrillex‘s song ‘Make It Bun Dem’ and I really liked that track so I Shazam-ed it and then I came to know about Skrillex. In a day, I listened all his tracks and slowly I was taken by electronic music,” 18-year-old Kumar says.
At 14, Kumar was determined to stand out amongst his basketball-playing, orator-aspiring school peers and so he fired up YouTube tutorials and picked up music production. His moniker WCKiD started off in August 2019 and hit over a 148,000 streams with the house-leaning “Waiting For You,” featuring fellow Indian producer Hysaze aka Harshit Singh in August last year. Now, you can hear him level up on the buoyant new offering “Eternity.” The track, releasing on electronic music label Simplify on January 11th, features fellow Indian electronic music duo Outshades — Nikhil Bhatt and Ritesh Pathak — and American singer Skye Light.
Although he’s had a tough time with pitching to labels and playlists to gain an audience, Kumar says the success of previous releases has instilled more confidence. With Simplify, however, the process to submit “Eternity” was fairly straightforward. “I basically visited their SoundCloud page and mailed this track to them. They replied that they really liked this track but they prefer original vocals so we got a vocalist on it and then they signed it,” Kumar adds.
There are two more songs coming up in January to start the year off for WCKiD, who is trying to keep his sonic identity as fluid as possible. “A lot of people may think of me as a house producer ’cause of my track ‘Waiting For You’ but to be honest, I’m a lot more than that. I love to make future bass trap and melodic dubstep too. In fact, I love to make lo-fi beats too. I hope my upcoming collaborations with [Italian producer] Adro, [singer] Ayla and [Dutch producer-singer] Stella Key will define me as who I truly am,” he adds.
Listen to “Eternity” below. The song is out on all platforms on January 11th.
