As a musician it is often difficult to box yourself in a genre or even an art form. Music exists everywhere – from the song of the birds and the flowing water, to that blasting from the speakers in the club. Critics have through ages endeavoured to box artists irrespective of their talent but as the world moves away from the binaries of good or bad, musicians are finding spaces to fill that are more liminal.
One such artist on the underground electronic music is Chinmay aka disector. If you come across his EP Delirium, you might be tempted to box him into a box that signifies a break core artist. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Of his introduction to music he says, “From a young age, my father’s hobby of singing and the tones on his Yamaha keyboard had the greatest influence on my understanding of music and sound. When I was 2, he recorded my voice on tape, which I then grew up to hear and was always curious to know how audio recordings induce such nostalgia. I always have had a strange and a deep connection to music and considered it to be a very important part of my life. Collecting good music came to me from a very early age and by high school , I got into a 3-man-band as a rhythm guitarist/bassist and also started making techno DJmixes for fun.”
It is obvious that the early introduction to music helped him build his own language of music. However, an introduction is nothing without the continuous pursuit of bettering the craft. Disector has kept it going with his multilayered creative work. “Between 2011-2013 I started learning and soon mastered synthesis and music production on my own with regular practice and dedication to the art, so much so that I had to drop out college . After dropping out architecture to pursue music, I moved to Chennai to study mixers, microphones , SFX and instrument recording. Always found myself jamming with traditional musicians who were vocalists, pianists, guitarists who loved the stuff i used to play and the sounds which were generated. I moved to Mumbai in 2016 and started living as a recluse in my apartment, dedicatedly crafting my skills and perfecting various techniques of music making, genre patterns, live sets, visuals integration. When I felt softwares aren’t as responsive as i wanted them to be and constantly required updates and prone to viruses, I started buying hardware synths in 2018 and got into electronics and even made my own electronic modules for making sounds, and also started a recording studio. All until December 2019, early 2020. I finally stepped out and started attending events and exploring the scene in mumbai, on which I was keeping an eye on from a distance since 2012. I came across several people already in the circuit who found my work likeable and were overwhelmed by the amount of music I had made since 2011. I used soundcloud as a chronological cloud storage over all these years and posted music on several free SoundCloud profile. Currently i have 5 active projects namely, Disector, fr4ctal, overflo, analog hermit , deepdrag . Some of the older and inactive ones are hexatic, 3nderman, euphero. To avoid multiple profiles and accounts and also to catalog most of the music I make under one roof, I started my record label rusted sound (www.rustedsound.com) in 2020. But that does not stop me from releasing on almost every label there is, so as to sort of, give all the genres I make, their own listeners/platform.”
Electronic Music goes beyond just the experience of listening, but to the visual. For a lot of the work that disector does, he also works on interesting visuals, both live and for videos. On asking him, it comes across that the technicality of various skills is what drives him towards experimenting with various parts of music production. “Visuals/Graphics ,3D modelling and VFX were always things I loved and even before getting into making music . I still do them and have done some live visuals for 2sensitive, EVP just for fun. Also , planning to release music videos with my co-creators at rusted sound for a few tracks I released recently. Apart from graphics and visuals, its electronics engineering, DIY tech projects, flash photography and teaching/tutoring which get most of my time.”
Coming to his latest EP under disector, which is an experiment with the legendary Amen Break. The breaks are probably the first one you’re introduced to as a student of music, given their place in electronic music as the most sampled breaks. What is not spoken enough about is the ethicality of using these breaks for the production of new tracks. “Delirium EP is a breakcore album, with 4 bass heavy recordings which i selected out of the music i had produced and recorded through out 2020. All 4 tracks were based on the widely known “Amen Break” drum loop, even though its very unethical to use that particular drum sample from 1969 record “Amen brother” because neither Coleman nor copyright owner Richard Lewis Spencer received royalties for its use; Coleman died homeless and destitute in 2006. The drum break was performed by Gregory Coleman, the break was widely sampled and became a staple of drum and bass and jungle music.“
While the use of the Amen Break is flawless in the album, disector’s skill with synths and melodic elements comes through in all the tracks. Often break core albums break away from melody to be entirely about the drums and rhythms. Delirium stands tall on its bass elements and how they work with the breaks to create a sound that is all-encompassing. ‘Blue Pill’ the last track on the EP, in particular, is a work of art with the arrangement of its atmospheric synth and Amen Breaks.
Now that disector is out from his bubble, and ready to release music with his label and others, we think widespread recognition is not a long way off. On being asked what the future holds, here’s what he said “I already released a 2 track EP called “States” only about 4 days after Delirium EP. I’ll soon be releasing a 9 track album called MAXIMUS with Regenerate music as Fr4ctal in early March. I will also be releasing tracks with Krunk Kulture, Bare Recordings, BDSM and Akashwani.”
