New Delhi’s Singer-Producer Sijya: ‘I Was Coming From a Place of Being Frustrated with Gatekeeping’

Sijya Gupta has had to deal with mother nature quite a bit when she’s been booked for outdoor stages in the recent months following her late 2022 debut EP Young Hate. The same month as the release of her spectral, shapeshifting electronic, experimental six-track EP, Sijya performed live at Magnetic Fields Festival in Rajasthan and that was fine.

It was however at the New Delhi leg of SAUCE festival in March that rain jinxed her soundcheck and led to an indoor performance. Ironically, Sijya went into that gig asking for cooling on stage for her laptop since soundcheck was at noon. And then it rained. At the Mumbai edition, the singer-producer was right next to the sea. “There was so much wind blowing, I literally felt like I was going to be blown away. I was completely overtaken by that.” Later on, at the next gig on home ground in the capital, Sijya was supporting U.K. electronic-jazz act The Cinematic Orchestra. “During my soundcheck, I set up and there was a sandstorm. I had to pack everything. It’s been actually quite stressful,” she says over a video chat.

Following a whirlwind half-year of promoting Young Hate with videos and gigs (she’s only played one club gig so far), there’s now a remixes EP called Young Love, both out via London’s lauded Accidental Records. At the moment, she’s likely to take a bit of a break from live shows. “I want to reassess how and what this live thing is and it is taking a lot out of me too, because I have to rehearse a lot. I have to rehearse for at least a week before I go on because I’m not a trained singer,” the artist says.

After all, music wasn’t Sijya’s main gig – she’s a freelance graphic designer. That explains some of the intriguing art that colors her social media announcements and the treatment she gave to her music videos off Young Hate. One of the main influences for the themes and aesthetic choices as a singer-producer on the EP was how she felt like an outsider in the design industry. She adds a disclaimed that “it is reductive to kind of bring it down to one thing” in terms of what the EP was going for. She, however, adds, “I was coming from a place of just being very hateful and frustrated with gatekeeping and industries in general. And it wasn’t so much in the music industry, actually, because I wasn’t a part of the music industry. It was more in the design community that I felt a bit ostracized and just annoyed.”

Sijya pauses her and then adds, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve articulated that before.” Sure, the songs don’t sound hateful, because they’re wrapped in ambient and a tinge of trip-hop, but Sijya says she did imbue an “outsider aesthetic.” In the works through most of 2020, the artist had reached out to plenty of labels but then Boxout.fm released “Have to Make My Bed” in 2021 as part of their compilation Suchi Selects, put together by Oslo-born, London-raised Indian-origin DJ-producer Suchi.

Watch the videos from ‘Young Hate’ EP

Now, with the Young Love remixes, she reached out to her own friends and artist discoveries she made from being part of Accidental Records. Producers like Dolorblind (“Stonefruit”) and A Temporary Matter (“Tell Me”) have been friends, while she loved the music put out by Rounak Maiti and reached out to him for a remix of “Clear.” Another remix of “Tell Me” comes from producer Pale Blue Dotter, whom Sijya has been at clubs and is about to release her own stuff too. Through the label, Swiss producer Yanik Soland became an Internet friend and hopped in for a remix of “52.” Dominic Voz remixes “Another Thing,” as part of a remix swap agreement with Sijya and she’s all praise for Crewdson joining the lineup. “He’s this incredible guy who makes his own instruments and he has these albums that he’s made with instruments that he’s made. They’re just absolutely stunning. I love his stuff,” she says.

Sijya did ask a lot more women about whether they’d take on remixes, but the response was a bit lukewarm. She says with full sincerity, “I did ask a lot of people that said no, and a lot of them were women. So I mean, I think that’s good in that they were busy and they had better things to do, so I’m happy for them.”

As Sijya plots her next move while also slowing down, she hints that her next material might be more “songwriterly” in terms of approach. She adds, “I was hoping for a couple of singles this year, but I’m listening back to them and I’m feeling like they need more time. So I’m just gonna sit and make music for a couple of months.”

Listen to ‘Young Love’ Remixes EP below.