So there's been a back-log of great tunes waiting to get some airtime on Indian Electronica Radio and I think we've been running the station on random-play for long enough - starting next week we'll be featuring regular timeslots of music exclusively featuring:

• the freshest unreleased underground cuts from around the world
• drum'n'bass/jungle
• old school breaks
• progressive breakbeats
• downtempo/chill-out
• dance music
• traditional/classical South Asian forms

Watch this space for an announcement - drop a line in if you have any recommendations!

q./ 

This is just a quick note to say that the ball is rolling for 2007's series of Indian Electronica Festivals - this year we'll be in London, Toronto, NYC and Bombay - rocking the Bindi like its 1999!!

In order to make this year's festival super-amazing, I'm glad to announce that some great people around the world have joined ranks to aid in planning/programming etc - check out the list of who our peops are this year in the festival section!

Just came across this vid, thought y'all might find it interesting.  The track, btw, is Talvin Singh's remix (I think) of Najma Akhtar's Goom Charakhana ;)

The Shiva Soundsystem is a fantastic bunch of instrumentalists, DJs and producers in London who've been making and promoting music for a number of years.

You might be familiar with Nerm, SSS' co-founder from the Asian Network - after offering us his first episode, he's taking a back seat this time round for their second series of podcasts and offering airtime to a host of other DJs and producers to spin selections of tunes which have inspired them over the years.

Once at their site, click into navigate>audio downloads from the top-right and you'll find yourself smiling at being able to download zips of the old podcasts plus a couple of mixed tapes and Series 2 - which has just begun...     

Thanks for the beats Shiva peops - we love you! :p 

Incase you were grooving out to Indian Electronica Radio earlier and were wondering where the stream went, sorry - it'll be offline for the next couple hours while I make some wicked upgrades happen...

q. 

If you're in or around NYC this Friday, be sure to check out Sub Swara -its already their 16th installment of this excellent world-electronica/bass-step night and features Edit - a los Angeles based artist who's released with smart-hiphop pushers like Ninjatune's Big Dada label.

Sub Swara is an event and crew; which includes performances by residents Dhruva, Sunder, Haj and Jua Kali - combining DJ mixed-sets with turntablism/scratching and love vocals.

This definitely makes for an interesting weekend - as Dhamaal reincarnates through SubSwara on the east coast of the USA and Worldly over in San Fran.

II highly recommend checking out Shaanti's 8th birthday parties this weekend if you're in the UK...

First up they'll be at the Custard Factory in Birmingham on Friday with mainstream/established industry stalwarts Panjabi MC and UK Apache plus, get this, JOI!  Yup, none other than Real World recording artist Farook Shamsher - a man integral in the development of alternative electronic musical movements in the UK.  The venue's got 2 rooms - expect a mix of thuggish Birmingham rudeboys alongside a few open minds.

The next night, Shaanti's at London's well-known Cargo nightclub - a great cosy venue.  Special guest on the bill: Asian dub Foundation! 

Incase you missed this one, I just saw a short interview grabbed from CNN and bunged onto youtube that's worth watching - its with DJ Rekha of Basement Bhangra fame.  Rekha holds down the oldest and longest running Bhangra jam in Manhattan and works with a one Mr Sharmaji - who you might've heard of via the BBC Asian Network (some new tracks of his have been getting spins on Friction recently)

If you're in NYC sometime soon, I recommend checking out Rekha's gigs - you can see some photos of a past Basement Bhangra in our gallery. 

Et voila:

20 years ago Matt Black and Jon More founded what is still today my favourite record label on the planet - Ninjatune.

In that time, they've released 6 full-length titles under the Coldcut moniker and promoted a healthy alternative dance/electronic music culture internationally by tirelessly gigging and working with a slew of amazing independent artists for goals higher that simply getting rich, unlike many other musicians and producers iin the music industry.

Coldcut have also released DJ and VJ software in the past that push the fold with sample-based performance and encouraged new media musicians to engage with audiences using multimedia technology.

To celebrate their birthday, one track a month will be released for public consumption/remix purposes from their newest release - Sound Mirrors.  So, all you budding producers and knob twisters out there - go grab some samples and have fun!

BBC Radio1 and Asian Network DJ Bobby Friction just got back from a mini-tour in NYC, San Fran and LA - he came back with some interesting conclusions about the States and an earth-rattling posit that may affect the state of world desi culture :) 

Check this:

Anyone know a popular 'desi' website called DesiHits?  Well.. they've just gotten a new site that's focused on blogging - apparently with guest DJs making posts.

The site's focus is on 'channels' - basically blog categories, such as 'Urban Desi' 'Bollywood' 'Bhangra' etc - pretty mainstream stuff... Oh wait, and then they've got one called 'Global Underground' that is referred to as a 'vibrant musical movement' that entails 'mind blowing electronica beats and head spinning dubplates.'  Ahem, mind blowing what???

Interesting?  Well, sort of - one of their bloggers is Maneesh the Twister (of Dhamaal SF) ... but he just seems to be blogging about himself for the moment...

Peter Gabriel's Real World Records are offering a pretty cool prize to the winning remixer of a new track by Joi.

Firstly - the track; it called 'What you Are' and is off of Joi's newest release - the third album which is to be released this month and is called 'Without Zero.' Its a great number with Bengali and English vocals, a 4/4 rhythm that rides slowely at just 110BPM - think Kwaito styles...

My opinion is that there is tons of room on this track to innovate - Farook has done a wonderful job of perfectly balancing lots of elements and including some touching vocal harmonies that would be a blast to play with... I'll be working on some versions of this myself and can't wait...

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the prize: a day @ Real World Studios, to work in the Big Room - recording your own work!  Wow!  To start salivating head over to Real World Studio's site and check out the photos... 

The Shiva Soundsystem have just re-designed their website and its pretty groovy:

You can still load up their stand-alone blog  but pretty much everything else is now integrated into a tight new grey package - the site's new features include an MP3 player and online shopping system so you can check out the latest shiva tracks and then buy them right there if available.

If you've never heard of these guys - they're a collective based in London who include co-founder Nerm; the same chap that hosts a show called Electro East on the BBC Asian Network. 

Those of you who are subscribers to the newsletter will know that we've been working on getting a live online radio station going full-time since this past summer.

Well, things got really busy with the festivals in 2006 but I'm proud to announce that Indian Electronica Radio is now LIVE!!!!!

For the moment, we are playing a random assortment of hundreds of artists - many of whom are independent.  Thrown into the rotation are signature DJ mixes from Asian Underground/Massive familiars as well as unknowns around the world.

Plans for the near future include letting site members upload their own music into a weekly slot for unsigned independent artists! 

You can tune into Indian Electronica Radio using WinAmp, Windows Media Player, Real, iTunes or anything else ;)  

Stay tuned by hitting up the Radio/Podcasts section of the site! :) (Excuse the pun) 

Some of you may have noticed that my Sounds of South Asia podcast series was somewhat neglected through 2006 ;)

Well, its a new year and I plan on posting a new mix to the radio/podcasts section at least once a month through '07.

Also, for the past few months, the podcasts weren't updating in iTunes but I've just fixed that - you can subscribe again to all of the podcasts we publish (signature mixes + the Sounds of South Asia) again for free - at the moment we have a total of 6 episodes and I'll be throwing a brand new one up this week.... 

this just in...

Fun Da Mental are in a documentary called The War Within will air this
weekend in the UK and the US on CNN .

Fun Da Mental will be featured prominently in the 3rd act. The principal UK
airdate is Jan 20th 8pm GMT and in the US Jan 20th at 8PM.

The complete times are: in the UK on Jan. 20th at 7am, 3pm , 8pm, and   Jan.
21st at 7am and 8pm.

In the United States it will air Jan 20th at 8PM  and 11PM on Jan 21st 8pm
and 11 PM on CNN Presents.
 
Aki Nawaz will be on the Heaven and Earth programme on Sunday 21st Jan BBC 1 at 10
am

I am super excited to officially announce the launch date for our 24hr radio station: its been a long time in the making but on February 1st, 2007 we flip the switch!

I will continue to host a weekly show called the Sounds of South Asia, which hopefully will be archived and continue as a series of podcasts you can roll around on the subway and bob your head to, plus, we'll be premiering a **ton** of signature mixes from DJs and producers around the world.

Namaste friends,

Looking back over the past year through the lens of indianelectronica.com, I have witnessed amazing developments in the music industry at large as well as the ever-changing role of South Asian musical tradition and living culture.

It has been an action-packed year wherein, for the first time in history, over 25 individual performers from Bombay, Toronto, San Francisco, Vienna and of course Brick Lane, shared the stage to express themselves through cutting edge electronic music for 7 hours at our Indian Electronica Festival in London, England. This was the first time that our site membership of over 250 people plus newsletter subscribers (its in the thousands now) were able to get together and celebrate the music we're all confused to define yet thrilled to experience, with the support of the BBC Asian Network, we were able to record these amazing performances and broadcasted them internationally every night for 'Indian Electronica Week' on Bobby Friction, Pathaan and Nerm's night-time radio shows.

What started out as an experiment over 3 years ago to see if there are other people around the world who enjoy the thrill of tabla chasing hard breakbeats, or calm harmony of english and hindi vocals being sung in unison, has rapidly developed into something real. Indianelectronica.com is steadily becoming a platform for musical collaboration and exchange. Just in the past year we've had about 200 people join the site as members and now offer some cool features you might be familiar with from friendster o myspace. In 2007 we will be adding the ability for our community members to share audio and video uploads through their personal profiles plus we'll be officially launching our live, 24hr/day free radio stream!

2007 will be a year another year of unprecedented musical accomplishment and it is my hope that together we can work on getting the music we love to more ears around our little planet, and strive to promote and support a global culture of artistic pluralism.

In peace,

Outcaste Records' veteran producer Mo Magic has just released a fantastic abum on his own imprint, Asian Dawn Recordings.  Its available online from Itunes and a couple of other places - the easiest to use and preview the music seems to be Beat Port

Its definately a drum'n'bass album and will likely be getting rinsed soon on the Asian Network as well as tru-skool d''n'b shows/networks - keep and eye out for an IE review soon! 

If you're an old fashioned bloke or lass and want an actual CD you can pump in your car or over the PA at your cousin-bother's wedding, head over to http://www.momagic.com/ or  http://www.asiandawn.co.uk/ to order a disc online.

As a special treat for all y'all fans of global electronic music out there: I just got word that Pathaan will be taking over Bobby Friction's 'Friction' show on the BBC Asian Network tonight.

Not too sure what he'll be busting out, cuts wise, as Bobby normally keeps things eclectic and uptempo - should be interesting to hear big P's take on the show - I'm figuring a souped-up engine's been outfitted to the Rickshaw for the show ;)

Its actually on in just a couple of hours - 10PM GMT, so get ready to get busy!  Oh, and they stream on demand for a weekso you can catch it again or later for the first time. Tune in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/friction/