For Tejas Nair, aka DJ Spryk, it is important to bring forward the story that usually accompanies music. The Mumbai-based visual artiste, producer and label owner also conducts radio shows. And now he has curated the first compilation under Red Bull Premieres, a monthly project featuring different independent artistes from around the country. For the first edition, Spryk has put together the sounds of Tienas, Voctronica, Okedo and Ofro, and ADK. A chat with the curator whose show can be heard on RedBull.com

How was Red Bull Premieres conceived?

I’ve been running this online radio show under my label Skip A Beat where I’ve been discovering and presenting all sorts of electronic and independent music that is being made across India. This ranges from original music, singer-songwriters, hip-hop collectives, rappers and electronic music producers as well as music that expands over different genres. So this has been on for three years and I’ve been on the Red Bull roster of artistes for quite some time. A month and a half back I had a chat with their team and they told me that they would like to work on a platform together where we could showcase new and unreleased music from independent Indian acts. It worked out well because of the radio show and label and because I am contacted by new musicians with their new music, demos and samples. That’s how it sort of started.

What was the artiste selection process for the compilation?

It depends. I accept demos through email and social media channels. But I also spend a lot of time going through soundcloud.com, mixcloud.com, bandcamp.com and many other platforms, looking for music myself. In this case some of the demos fit really well into the concept and some were sent to me specifically as their releases were around the corner. So the team and I were listening to the music and trying to understand what the story is. The most important part of Red Bull Premieres is that the story behind the music has to come to life. So all the tracks that you hear have a distinctive story behind them... about how their music came together or how the artistes came together.

We believe you have some fresh content coming up?

I am working on this audio-visual show… I like to call it an electronic music adventure, which is about tracing and taking influences from the evolution of mankind and our relationship with technology and how it has influenced different aspects of our lives and decisions that we make. The show came together through a collaboration with Magnetic Fields festival… when they approached me for the festival and asked me to build the show out and present for the first time at their last edition in 2019. And that was supposed to be the unveiling of the show and it came together really well. That was the show I was going to take on tour and the plan was to release bits of the album as we did more shows. But since that’s not happening I’m building on a structure that can deliver the experience digitally. I can’t give too many details at the moment but it’s not the traditional camera-and-soundcard experience. It’s far more immersive, it has a mixed media approach to it, there’s a lot of trace-media elements to it, there’s a lot of film, music, objects, themes….

The four acts on Red Bull Premieres

Fubu by Tienas: I found his band FTS on YouTube a couple of years ago while searching for new material for my radio show. He went on to drop a mixtape on Azadi Records that cemented the fact that he is in a league of his own. I absolutely love the way he is able to use his music and wordplay to deliver not just punchlines but address complex subjects.

Yaaruda Tamizhan by Ofro and Adk: Ofro is a prolific independent music producer from Chennai who has been working with various styles of music for many years now. We both spent about four years together in Australia, studying, travelling and making music. He’s spent the last few months working with a Tamil rapper named ADK, based in Singapore. They are both widely regarded as some of the freshest artistes in the Tamil diaspora.

Impulse by Okedo: Their music is rich and showcases a lot of depth in skill as well as narrative. We had the chance to share the stage not too long ago when they were opening for me at the Magnetic Fields South Stage in December. A few months later while I was doing an Instagram live stream listening to demos for my label, they sent me an unreleased track called Impulse.

Seven by Voctronica: Voctronica is a one-of-a-kind a capella band that is packed with incredibly talented musicians, an infectious energy in their style of performance and they manage to do what they do without any instruments at all.