Arjun Vagale is one of India’s most acclaimed DJs, part of an exclusive new breed of cutting-edge producers making a massive globe impact. As one of the country’s leading electronic music exports, he plays over a hundred gigs a year back home and tours regularly through Europe and Asia. A man with a true passion for the underground, a sound he relentlessly plays, produces and promotes, it’s no surprise Arjun was awarded 2012’s Best Techno DJ / DJ Of the Year, and currently reigns at the top of the first-ever DJ Mag India Poll 2012.
Download Arjun Vagale's Pulse Podcast here.
Pulse: Firstly congratulations on headlining BPM Festival in Mexico earlier this year. Can you tell us a little about your experience playing at such a prestigious festival with so many acclaimed artists? Arjun Vagale: Hey guys, a pleasure to speak with you. BPM was incredible. As a festival, it’s been on my radar for many years, and last year while on tour in the US, I finally got invited - so I was pretty excited.
Getting to Mexico from India was the real task, and the Polar Vortex didn’t help much either. December is always a super busy month for me in India, so I pretty much had to finish my NYE gig in Chennai, head to New Delhi, then fly out to Mexico via London and NYC. My London to NYC flight got canceled, but with some incredible luck the airline put me on another aircraft and I reached NYC. Then the flight to Cancun was overbooked, with the airline offering ridiculous amounts to passengers if they’d agree to take a later flight, not to mention absolutely rammed airports with pissed off passengers whose flights had been canceled. So yeah, it was a real trek! But when I finally got to Playa Del Carmen, it was so worth it.
Playing my set was naturally the highlight of the trip, because it was so well received. Had a bunch of guys coming up to me afterwards with all sorts of compliments and tequila offerings. I stayed in Playa for a week and got to hear some amazing music, and of course hang out with so many DJ’s and producers. Its always great to meet someone with whom you’ve communicated over email so much. Being based in India, it’s a rare opportunity.
It seems 2012 was also big year for you, firstly coveted as 'India’s Best Techno DJ' and 'DJ of the Year' in 2012, which lead on to you being named as the Top DJ in the first-ever DJ Mag India. What were the milestones of your career that led to this achievement, in your opinion? Well, I’ve been in the ‘business’ for about 17 years, and I’ve always had a deep love for music. That love developed into a career that I took very seriously, I’ve always really pushed my self. I can’t really single out any ‘one’ milestone on this journey, its really all about being consistent – whether you’re making music or playing it. I guess all the years of hard work were recognized by my peers!
We know that music was always part of your childhood growing up, could you tell us a little about that and how it influenced you in your career? Music has been a huge part of me ever since my childhood. My folks always had the Beatles, Elvis or Led Zepplin playing at home. My Dad was in the hotel industry, so we often had bands playing in the lobby and me and my brother would go down and hear them, often get on stage with them, pretending to sing and play our toy guitars. Later I had a massive metal phase in my teens, where I learned to play different instruments, thought I was never too good at them! I think it was around then I realized that music was something I always wanted to do, in some form or the other. Growing up in India, one didn’t have too many options, so you had to make your own path. I started DJing when I was 16 and it just developed from there. I’ve always wanted to make music, so in a way, D’ing was just a stepping stone. If I hadn’t discovered electronic music, I would probably be in a rock band or something.
Many of our international readers may not be aware of your previous act, the famous Jalebee Cartel. Would you like to help inform them and also maybe the relevance it had in India at the time, and legacy that continues? I started Jalebee Cartel with a bunch of friends almost 10 years ago. The idea was to do something different and have fun with it, we never imagined it would become as massive as it did. The live act was revolutionary for its time, as India was just about coming to terms with dance music. We were heavily influenced by Underworld and Infusion, and I think our music kind of reflected that. It all started out with us just playing DJ gigs together, then producing together, and eventually doing a live act. India hadn’t seen anything like it, which is why we rose so quickly. We were also one of the first few Indians to release dance music internationally, and got signed to various labels, which led to many connections worlwide. This was all way before the current EDM nonsense started. The band was extremely successful, playing over a hundred live gigs a year, and touring Europe often, playing venues like Paradiso in Amsterdam and Tresor in Berlin. It was a great time and I think it influenced and shaped the future of dance music in India.
Besides your producing and DJ career, you have several other industry projects and entitie, ILM Academy and UnMute Agency. Tell to us about the talent at the Agency and Academy? I’ve always wanted an agency to represent me, but we had nothing of the sort in India. When Jalebee Cartel was coming to an end, my long-time manager Dev Bhatia and I decided to put our years of experience in managing the band to good use. There was a tremendous need for representation within the underground music scene, which was blowing up, so we took the idea to a few close friends and they were all super excited. Between Dev and I, we have a pretty solid work ethic, and we wanted to bring some preofesionalism to the game. Today, ‘UnMute’ and its sister division ‘UnMute Plus’ manage and book 25 of the brightest stars in the country.
I LOVE MUSIC Academy was founded by my brother and his business partner as a small school in the city of Bangalore. I helped them develop it, and we raised it to international standards by opening our flagship academy in New Delhi. Today it’s one of the finest music academies in the country for electronic music production. The whole reason for doing all this is to help and develop artists. I never had any one to show me the way, so I want to do all I can do push and build the scene -- and for me the scene is local talent, not the amount of international artists that come down. We have some incredible artists in India already, guys like Kohra, BLOT!, Praveen Achary, Sound Avtar, Vipul and a whole lot more. They’re just waiting to explode worldwide!
Would we be correct in saying that the scene in India has been growing well for the last decade, but it’s only in the last 5 years or so that it has exploded? Do you think the money factor with big key-players in the industry has anything to do with this? And if so, is it having an effect on the quality of what’s coming out of India? Absolutely! Today dance music is a global phenomena, and the worldwide EDM explosion is very much happening in India. The money factor does play a massive role within a scene and influences how it develops. It’s sad to watch what we’ve worked so hard towards in the last 15 years being washed away by commercial pop. It’s pretty simple to understand really; if you feed the masses with shit music, that’s all they’ll know, and then it’s too late. Every generation of clubbers looks to what is most accessible to them, and with the money now involved, the quality has really suffered. We also have a tendency of bringing the same or similar DJ’s down every year, so how is that going to build or develop the secne? I mean, they all play exactly the same music, even probably have the exact same set list.
Having said that, we do have some people who are working very hard to keep the underground thriving… but it’s an uphill battle, especially when you’re up against the big boys.
You have quite a few international releases that are being played by some of the biggest artist names in the world. Could you tell us a little about your past productions, what are you working on now? And how does it feel to have your music spread around the world? I’ve been fortunate to have a few people really push my productions on the international circuit. I owe a lot to Ali (Dubfire), Carl, Richie, Fergie and Kaiserdisco, as they have constantly been supporting my music. I think it boils down to consistancy and quality over quantity. You can imagine how hard it is to beak through coming out of India. I mean, no one really took our producers seriously. When all these guys started playing my music, and supporting it, suddenly the world took notice. It didn’t come overnight, it’s been many many years of pushing, and creative understanding.
With Jalebee I produced over a hundred releases, so it gave me a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t. When I went solo, one of my first releases was with Tom Buddens’s Alive inprint, and that caught Fergie’s attention. Since then we have been good mates, and he really pushed me to refine my productions. I had three releases on his various labels, all of them were well-received, and I remember Ali playing one of them. That’s how he heard of me, and now you can hear a lot of my tracks in a Dubfire set. Similarly when I sent a couple of tracks to Kaiserdisco, they immediately signed it to their then new label, KD Music. It was the label’s second release, and Richie must have played the track “She Said” 25 times that summer. Carl licenced it to his Space Ibiza CD, it stayed on the charts for months… that was probably my big international break. ‘Terrakoz’ on Trapez Ltd was also a massive Ibiza hit, being played by everyone, and the funny thing is, it was the B-side of the EP. It went under the radar initially but then Carl played it so much that everyone took notice and suddenly it was on BBC Radio 1. This was my ‘hit’ track so to speak.
Since then I’ve had a few big releases on Tronic, Octopus, Trapez, a remix for Victor Calderone - that was huge in the US, it really opened that market up for me. Most recent my remix for Stelios Vassiloudis’ ‘What's That’ on Bedrock stayed on the Techno charts for over a month. I’ve been very focused on just releasing quality work, as I produce a lot, but only a select few tracks see it out. Its such an amazing feeling seeing all these guys who I’ve looked up to all these years playing my music. It’s the biggest buzz. I’ve got some big releases lined up for 2014, but what I’m most peoud off is my colabration EP with Ramiro on SCI+TEC that should be out in June, just before Sonar.
We have noticed that you have a love for the counterculture in the techno world and tend to travel into the darker and more experimental musical terrains. Is this something that just happened naturally? Evolution is key! I tend to get bored very quickly with a certain sound or idea, so I’m always looking to try and move forward. After being in the game for so long, one does tend to get jaded, so the experemental stuff keeps the mind fresh. The new breed of producers are doing some mad music right now, and it’s very inspiring.
When producing, it’s easy to get caught up in your own space in the studio; things need to be a specific way a lot of the time. What do you prefer, working alone or collaborating with someone? I’ve done a lot of both actually. When I was doing the Jalebee thing, we would collaborate a lot with each other, send track ideas back and forth. When I went solo, it was a refreshing change. I threw away all the presets and started fresh. For the last 3-4 years I’ve made my mark with solo productions and I’m now excited about fresh collabrations. In fact Ramiro Lopez and I have been working on a lot of material lately, our first few colabs have been snapped up by Dubfire for SCI+TEC, and we just did a remix for Bedrock that’s been on the techno charts. I’ve also working on a colab with one of my heroes so I’m really stoked about that. I see myself producing a lot on the road now, so my studio is pretty much on my laptop, although I do get into the studio to do mixdowns. It’s a really creative way of getting inspired – just change your workspace and environment and the ideas start to flow.
Do you think a producer needs to be a dancer to fully understand what it will take to make a big dancefloor track? He/she definitely needs to be a DJ / performer in some way, it’s the best way to test a track. I always play new material at gigs, and then go back to the studio and tweak it, or realize it’s not a bomb and just shelve it. Understanding a dancefloor is key when making dance music, after all, you are making it for people to dance to.
You have started of 2014 on a super note – what else do you have lined up in coming months? Any interesting international Festivals in the pipeline? I’m really excited to be playing WOMB in Tokyo for the first time this week. I think its every underground DJ’s dream to play Japan, and WOMB is the holy grail – so to speak. I’ll also be back in Europe and the US this summer, we are just finalizing dates. I’m looking forward to playing the Tronic 20 Years party at Sonar – Christian Smith always has an outstanding lineup and I’m glad to be a part of it.
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