Indo Warehouse Founders Kahani and Kunal Merchant Talk India Tour
The DJ-producer duo behind the platform and label took over reopening night at Rockpool at W Goa last week
(From left to right) AREUBLUE, Ethyr, Kunal Merchant and Kahani aka Armaan Gupta live at Indo Warehouse's gig at Rockpool at W Goa. Photos: Courtesy of W Goa
The party don’t stop when you’re in Goa, much after the new year crowd slinks back to their offices. It’s still tourism season and the newly reopened Rockpool at W Goa is more than happy to capitalize on it. The sprawling space by Vagator Beach recently hosted New York’s Indo Warehouse, the platform and label founded by DJ-producers Kahani aka Armaan Gupta and Kunal Merchant on January 5th.
With over a thousand in attendance, Indo Warehouse also included sets by selectors such as Ethyr and AREUBLUE, who have been part of the movement in the U.S. and Europe. The reopening of Rockpool at W Goa coupled with Indo Warehouse’s debut India tour showed some programming might at a time when other venue spaces like antiSOCIAL are also cropping up in the state to make the most of party central.
Over a Rockpool, though, with lights along the railing that led down to the main dancefloor and disco balls strung up, it felt like an uncomplicated night with tables also set up for a chill vibe. Indo Warehouse were chill, for sure, but that was only part of the journey. The artists steadily built the tempo up, winning audiences over with tracks that sampled A.R. Rahman’s Bollywood hits, “Yeh Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana” sung by Asha Bhosle, Abida Parveen and R.D. Burman’s “Mehbooba Mehbooba” in a seemingly spectral way that hit when you least expect them.
Kahani worked in everything from “Chaiyya Chaiyya” to “Kehna Hi Kya” and Merchant threw in bits of “Yeh Ladka Hai Allah” and “Urvasi Urvasi,” which really prompted the question – what makes this different from Bollywood night with just really good DJs? It might be an oversimplification to compare, but in one way, the nostalgia that’s crafted a deeper understanding of electronic music with Indo Warehouse.
It’s one thing to play up Indian movie song samples in your tracks to a diaspora audience in another country, and a different matter to bring that to an Indian audience. Gupta says he was never really worried about how they would be received in India. “I think once upon a time, those thoughts crossed our mind. Now, that never crosses our mind, because I think what we do is actually authentic to us. So there’s zero pandering.” Rightfully so, everyone at Rockpool at W Goa was very much in the groove of things, cheering on Indo Warehouse throughout.
With eight cities remaining in their India tour – including Dome, NSCI SVP Stadium in Mumbai on January 25th – the duo spoke with Rolling Stone India from a villa at W Goa about how they recharged after their first date at Sunburn Festival in late December and spent their evenings on a temp studio setup at the hotel, making new tracks. Some of which will get previewed on tour itself, as Gupta and Merchant promise plenty of surprises in the coming two weeks. Merchant says, “We’re gonna have some secret surprises that pop up in different shows, that’s gonna be fun.”
Overall, the goal is to bring the experience from “the moment you step onto the property until you depart” the gig, according to Gupta. He adds about the questions that drive their sets, “What do we want to bring back from the old crates that really makes everybody smile and sing and give our own twist to it? And then even with the originals, how do we make people dance and move in a way that they haven’t felt before?”
Merchant adds, “The thing that we hear from people is that this sound has never existed. And what I mean by that is the elements of our culture that we’re bringing into the electronic music spectrum, the way we’re doing, it hasn’t existed, but it has existed for other cultures, in Latin culture and African culture.”
Founded in 2021, Merchant met Gupta at a party and the two got talking about what they could work on together, in terms of growing with each other and their platform. Merchant says about their relationship, “My competition is when I hear him and I’m like, ‘Damn, how does he have this? What is this thing he’s doing?’ That’s the game, we continue to push each other.” Gupta adds, “There will constantly be moments where like, he’s playing something, and I’m just looking at him like, holding his shoulder. ‘What is this?!’”
Those kinds of moments, especially when evoked for their original mixes, are then pushed out through the label. Another one that’s coming up is “Rang Rasiya” featuring vocalist Chitralekha Sen, which was tested back at an Indo Warehouse party in November 2023. Gupta says, “That track is specifically something that we want to send to artists around the world, and we want to hear in rooms in almost every country.”
There are already plans to return to India within the span of a year for “round two” as Gupta calls it. There’s a North America tour, Australia and Europe coming up as well. Merchant adds, “We’re going to probably try to see it all. I don’t think it will go to Antarctica this year. But we’ll try to see most of this world and hopefully, people get a chance to really sample our sound.”
