Exclusive Premiere: Three Oscillators and Karshni Confront Failure on ‘Drowning’

In perhaps what was the right move, Mumbai electronic music producer duo Three Oscillators ”“ Brij Dalvi and Avit Rane ”“ realized sometime last year that their tunes were sounding “super monotonous.” After spending the last few months not just juggling day jobs but also racking their brains to arrive at new sonic terrains, the duo enlisted singer-songwriter Karshni Nair and have developed a glitch-centric new song called “Drowning.”

Three Oscillators, who have released two EPs since 2017 that go from ambient to shimmering dancefloor beats, put together “Drowning” with new warping and granular synth plugins. Dalvi says, “It’s all about throwing those samples into those plugins and using whatever comes out of it. Most of our new music is trial and error because a lot of samples we use and make depend on chance. We’ve been experimenting with this ”˜flowy’ vibe with our music, and we’ve made sure it translates everywhere, even with the artwork courtesy Arundathi Manakkad.”

Artwork for “Drowning” by Arundathi Manakkad

The producer caught a set by Nair in Bandra in November last year and was introduced to the online music studio and cloud platform BandLab by the singer-songwriter. She had written an early draft of “Drowning” in about an hour and shared it with Three Oscillators, who added their production chops. The song brings together vulnerable lyrics about failure and trying to navigate one’s way out of a “horrible place.” Nair, who has been writing and releasing music since May last year, adds, “I’m an impulsive person and an even more impulsive writer, but I’m glad about what came out of it.”

Both artists agree that the collaboration helped in different ways. “I want to work with more producers because there is so much variety in the way each of them approaches a song,” Nair says. Three Oscillators, for their part, promise more tracks and working on a new live set.