In many ways, both Jain’s temporal and musical journey embody her existential abstraction of Sunday. When describing her craft to Ableton in a 2021 interview, she says: “I’m not a Western classical musician or an Indian classical musician, I’m the Space in Between.” Her debut album, Under the Lilac Sky, is an interrogation of the aural spaces between her current life in the US and her childhood in New Delhi. In it, she develops a reimagining of Hindustani classical ragas with modular synthesis, creating a dynamic fusion that preserves the improvisational modality of Indian music while introducing modern electronic textures, earning her the moniker of the Modular Princess.
Reticent to approach her sound solely through an essentialist binary, Jain previously said in an interview that “Indian classical is just one of the things on my mood board”. The multifaceted nature of her soundscapes is most pertinent on Jain’s 2024 second album, Delight, where Jain further pushes her sonic architectural boundaries by incorporating acoustic elements like saxophone and flute, alongside her own layered vocals.
Ever multitudinous, Jain describes this mix as “a groovy moody sludgy sexy headphone dance party”. Listeners of her previous Crack Mix or her monthly NTS show Ghungru will be well aware of Jain’s profusion of sophisticated sounds and instrumentation to construct a diasporic party, and this hour long cross-genre exploration certainly runs in the same groove. Dive in.
Where are you today (Sunday)? Currently, I’m sitting on a park bench in Herbert Von King in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
What? Enigmatic, sensorial, transcendent
What is your ideal Sunday? And what’s your ideal soundtrack to it? In the unstructured context of being a full time creative, my weekdays blend into each other in a way that creates a continuous sentence. Sundays are a comma; nobody wants anything from me on a Sunday, including myself. Spontaneity thrives, which I love.
Really good ones I had recently was when I woke up at 7 AM to go see CCL and separately Special Request b2b Goldie at Nowadays. Those were fun! But mostly on Sundays I just want to lay somewhere comfortable and green. I always have a long list of things on my listen list. Today, it is 5:00 PM now, and I have heard pmxper by pmxper on Smalltown Supersound (love their ASMR-y sexy spoken word aesthetic) and WTF with Marc Maron & Jewel (my friend Sarah sent me this episode because apparently Jewel and I think similarly about the same things)
How do you like to unwind away from music? I unwind by just eating Asian and South Asian food like dumplings and lentils and pho. I miss the fruit I get back in India like lychee and cheekoo and sharifa. I love seeing my friends sprawl on my blue Kashmiri carpet that I brought to my Brooklyn apartment from my family home in Delhi, drinking extra dirty martinis at Dynaco, and lately I’ve been zoning out to the Sopranos. Sometimes I even unwind by listening to the news which I know sounds wild but when I’m in the studio by myself all day, connection to the outside world I welcome.
Describe your Sunday mix. This mix is a groovy moody sludgy sexy headphone dance party. I play tracks that are rhythm forward, explore synthesized drums, soft shoegazy vocals, breaks and idm…simultaneously old & new to my ears. I started the mix with an unreleased and unfinished experiment of mine, I’ve been experimenting with production styles lately. Yush, Zara, Beau Wanzer, bookworms, cousin, mu tate, simisea, verraco, ccl and ciel rest alongside seasoned autechre, drew mcdowall, kid606, dasha rush, sepehr, lucy. The production of the tracks here feels inspiring, their essence is dark but confident. I really love the moments when ambient vocals float over drum loops as if a gust of wind blew over a plain of sand wiping clean all patterns and imprints.
When I first heard the recording I thought my selection is a bit all over the place, but I decided it reflects where I am in life at the moment, so I decided to stick with it.
Sunday Mix: Arushi Jain
Sunday Mix: Arushi Jain
In many ways, both Jain’s temporal and musical journey embody her existential abstraction of Sunday. When describing her craft to Ableton in a 2021 interview, she says: “I’m not a Western classical musician or an Indian classical musician, I’m the Space in Between.” Her debut album, Under the Lilac Sky, is an interrogation of the aural spaces between her current life in the US and her childhood in New Delhi. In it, she develops a reimagining of Hindustani classical ragas with modular synthesis, creating a dynamic fusion that preserves the improvisational modality of Indian music while introducing modern electronic textures, earning her the moniker of the Modular Princess.
Reticent to approach her sound solely through an essentialist binary, Jain previously said in an interview that “Indian classical is just one of the things on my mood board”. The multifaceted nature of her soundscapes is most pertinent on Jain’s 2024 second album, Delight, where Jain further pushes her sonic architectural boundaries by incorporating acoustic elements like saxophone and flute, alongside her own layered vocals.
Ever multitudinous, Jain describes this mix as “a groovy moody sludgy sexy headphone dance party”. Listeners of her previous Crack Mix or her monthly NTS show Ghungru will be well aware of Jain’s profusion of sophisticated sounds and instrumentation to construct a diasporic party, and this hour long cross-genre exploration certainly runs in the same groove. Dive in.
Where are you today (Sunday)? Currently, I’m sitting on a park bench in Herbert Von King in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
What? Enigmatic, sensorial, transcendent
What is your ideal Sunday? And what’s your ideal soundtrack to it? In the unstructured context of being a full time creative, my weekdays blend into each other in a way that creates a continuous sentence. Sundays are a comma; nobody wants anything from me on a Sunday, including myself. Spontaneity thrives, which I love.
Really good ones I had recently was when I woke up at 7 AM to go see CCL and separately Special Request b2b Goldie at Nowadays. Those were fun! But mostly on Sundays I just want to lay somewhere comfortable and green. I always have a long list of things on my listen list. Today, it is 5:00 PM now, and I have heard pmxper by pmxper on Smalltown Supersound (love their ASMR-y sexy spoken word aesthetic) and WTF with Marc Maron & Jewel (my friend Sarah sent me this episode because apparently Jewel and I think similarly about the same things)
How do you like to unwind away from music? I unwind by just eating Asian and South Asian food like dumplings and lentils and pho. I miss the fruit I get back in India like lychee and cheekoo and sharifa. I love seeing my friends sprawl on my blue Kashmiri carpet that I brought to my Brooklyn apartment from my family home in Delhi, drinking extra dirty martinis at Dynaco, and lately I’ve been zoning out to the Sopranos. Sometimes I even unwind by listening to the news which I know sounds wild but when I’m in the studio by myself all day, connection to the outside world I welcome.
Describe your Sunday mix. This mix is a groovy moody sludgy sexy headphone dance party. I play tracks that are rhythm forward, explore synthesized drums, soft shoegazy vocals, breaks and idm…simultaneously old & new to my ears. I started the mix with an unreleased and unfinished experiment of mine, I’ve been experimenting with production styles lately. Yush, Zara, Beau Wanzer, bookworms, cousin, mu tate, simisea, verraco, ccl and ciel rest alongside seasoned autechre, drew mcdowall, kid606, dasha rush, sepehr, lucy. The production of the tracks here feels inspiring, their essence is dark but confident. I really love the moments when ambient vocals float over drum loops as if a gust of wind blew over a plain of sand wiping clean all patterns and imprints.
When I first heard the recording I thought my selection is a bit all over the place, but I decided it reflects where I am in life at the moment, so I decided to stick with it.
See Tracklist
