20g is not my first rodeo when it comes to an ONNO Collective release. It has been a pattern, mostly — each rendezvous with acts associated with the same has been marked by a distinct epiphany : here is a record that respects sound. In the hedge-maze of words surplus, this tape has its tremulous heart placed in an absence of lyrics (minus Disco Puppet’s Fuck Your God)— and maybe is oddly relieving to listen to.
Described as a “sonic map ofIndia’s outer-edge electronic and experimental music scenes”, the tape features 20 acts from across the country and is supposed to be “both a document and a departure: a collective assertion of presence from voices pushing boundaries in India’s electronic and experimental landscape” —, this compilation has been harnessed together by TITO+, the head behind the Collective. The 90 minutes that 20g spans has its ebbs and troughs, but one should not pursue it for listening if left-field is not their mojo, because an inattentive listening habit results in indubitable loss of the grasp of character of a track.
Some tracks also, functionally, end up serving as preludes or conclusions of others — suffering from the lack of strong enough signature to pull meaning of their own when listened to independently.
One of the primary standouts, is ORIENTAL SYSTEMS’ Ritual II, who documents ritual instrumentals with feedbacking signals and circuitry, rehashing my memory of dhaak-kartal playing somewhere in the nauseating experience of a smoke-cloistered pujo. It is intriguing that Bangalore-based Disco Puppet’s Fuck Your God exists at such close proximity to the former, where his distorted guitar hits and randomized percussion strikes with his constantly warping vocals exist as a mirror presence to Ritual II, in some way, yin-yanging each other, although perhaps they are both going for the same affect.
Paradafash’s Ember, led by martial drum patterns is less elusive, more club-adjacent (see, Gaspar Noe’s Climax for the kind of dance bacchanalia I am referring to), and not as dismembering as the rest. However, perhaps the best track on this EP, at least the one I am the most partial to, is kidsinthejungle, or Neelansh Mitra’s remembering ishrat meenai, a soft, incandescent track that acts as a sonic archive for his grandparents’ love, with ambient harmonium droning, and it also forms the nostalgic, humane centrepoint of the tape — because while all the electronic paraphernalia reproduce and reverberate spectrums of emotions and praxis, this one is so willfully tender that it sticks out to you. TITO+’s tracklisting has to be credited here, because Ayush Sayalkar’s miss you so follows right after, forming, as if a conclusion to the EP and the previous track.
Some of the other, quite beautiful, tracks on the EP are West Bengal-based Taka Dao’s synthpop Gaytown, which has nasally, distorted, pitched up vocal treatments spread out, which reminds me of the Ghost King from Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne— that is, if he were an EDM aficionado. Mumbai based philterSoup, or Sanjay Das’ SHUNNO has him tinkering away with gentler synths, a departure from his more maximalist recent debut album, Lights On. Priyaji’s Breathe In Witness is entertaining, the bass is fun, and you have these mini interludes within the track which makes a fog shore up against your listening all of a sudden, like a catatonic humming.
20g requires your patience. However, when afforded that, it is worth it. It also opens you up to multiple soundmakers, archivists, experimenters in the Indian left field space. Sit with your thoughts on this one, because nearly none of the artists aim to tell you how to feel, only expanding their domain of emotion into your hearing space in microtones. 20g, as promised, is a good cartographic exercise, a map of sounds you might not remember enough to hum, but impress into the crevices of your brain for sudden recall — a document of what all the magic cast by the sound truthers comprises right now.
20g is available in casette form for purchase on Onno Collective’s Bandcamp.
