Premiere: Hear New Delhi Producer Ayush’s Absorbing Debut EP ‘Annihilate’

Sometime in 2011, New Delhi-based producer Ayush Jajoria got introduced to electronic music. It’s no surprise that the first artists he heard were hit-makers such as Deadmau5, Tiesto and Armin van Buuren. He says, “I was instantly hooked to it, dropping all the other kinds of music.”

One summer day in 2013, Jajoria began music, which he says made him see beyond the “façade” of the genre. After a few songs and creating music under different monikers (Fourth Note, The Lost Envelope), he’s releasing his debut EP Annihilate as Ayush, crafting swivelling beats, introspective synth melodies (best heard on “Fade Away,” a track that’s received over 34,000 plays) and even a rock influence (on the cinematic “Chasm.”) He says that “Chasm” is among his favorites. “In a way my music was becoming too genre-bound, which I didn’t like. ”˜Chasm’ was kind of the escape from it, it’s the track that I enjoyed producing most out of them all.”

While Annihilate may give the impression of a heavy, destructive sound, Jajoria relates the choice of title to its definition in physics. “It means ”˜convert (a subatomic particle) into radiant energy.’ The EP started at a very dark and depressing point in my life, I was pretty confused and mad about a lot of personal aspects of my life, somehow the depression was the subatomic particle that I needed to convert into energy. I’d rather say it was very unconscious. The more I worked on it the more I found different types of layer of myself of that particular time,” the producer says.

These days, Jajoria has found like-minded peers in young music collective Jwala, who have released three compilations so far. He says the glue that bound them together included “the music we used to hear, the sounds we used to make and of course, memeing [sic] and other things.”

Annihilate launches with a special set at gig series REProduce Listening Room on September 24th in New Delhi. Jajoria says, “It’s a really cool place to share music or whatever you want to do really, without the pressure of putting out an act to please the people first, it just gives you the room to be yourself, which I like a lot.” If he did want to play in regular club venues, he prefers to do it as Fourth Note. He says, “After this EP release, I’ll solely be focusing on the Fourth Note side of my music. I think it’s time to show the other side of my music as well to the world.”

Hear Annihilate