Watch: The Electrovertz Cover Shoot – June 2015
Mumbai-based The Electrovertz including Malika Haydon and Nina Shah are among the many women firing up the EDM scene in India today
”˜Woman’ is not a genre of music, Mollie Wells, of American techno live act Funerals, once famously said to Electronic Beats magazine in 2011. Electronic music’s rich history is filled with pioneers like BBC Radiophonic Workshop co-founder Daphne Oram to transgender women Wendy Carlos, who designed synthesisers for the legendary Italian producer Giorgio Moroder. DJs like Austrian techno producer Electric Indigo (Susanne Kirchmayr), Anja Schneider from Germany and Ellen Allien, who founded the electro music label BPitch Control, have been trail blazers both as producers and talent scouts. India’s club culture blossomed more recently in the late Nineties, marked by an underground psychedelic trance scene, and the noughties, when drum’n’ bass-inspired music of the Bhavishyavani Collective held gigs in seedy suburban nightclubs.
The turning point in India’s club scene can be traced to a night at basement club Rock Bottom in Juhu in November 2002. When DJ Pearl presided over that gathering of 20 people, little did she know that in the next 13 years, Indian artists and women in particular would feature at the Southbank Centre in London (Tanvi Rao of Sulk Station), perform at the legendary SXSW festival in Austin, Texas (see Sandunes), run house-and-techno record labels (see DJ Kini) and like our cover stars, The Elektrovertz (Malika Haydon and Nina Shah), plan a multi-city tour through the birthplace of electronic music, the United States.
For the full story, pick up the latest issue of Rolling Stone India
