Posted: March 2025
My performance at Lollapalooza India 2025 was the biggest creative risk I’ve taken. After years of being associated with a particular sound and approach, I decided it was time to completely reimagine what my music could be. What happened over those 45 minutes on stage represented everything I’d been building toward—a complete departure that felt both necessary and terrifying.
I’ve always been drawn to the complexity of Indian musical culture, but I’d never figured out how to honor that diversity without falling into tokenism or surface-level fusion. This show became my attempt to create a language that could hold all these different voices and stories without forcing them to sound the same.
The concept was ambitious: each track would function as its own narrative world while contributing to a larger story about contemporary Indian identity. I wanted Marathi protest poetry thundering over chenda drums. Hindi and Tulu rap dissolving into glitch-heavy sci-fi dreamscapes. South Indian ritual theatre traditions from Būta Kōlā transforming into anthems for folk-hero villains. The challenge was making it cohesive rather than chaotic.
Working with collaborators was essential to getting this right. I couldn’t tell these stories authentically on my own—I needed voices that lived these experiences. Bamboy brought the resistance spirit from indigenous Bombay communities that I could never access as an outsider. Gravity understood the tension between rural ritual and modern rebellion in ways that informed the entire sonic palette. Bharg’s approach to lyricism pushed me to think differently about how language functions in electronic music, while Ofro’s presence added another layer to the live energy we were creating.
Each artist became more than a feature—they were characters within a mythology we built together. Working with Bharg and Ofro especially helped me understand how to bridge the different worlds I operate in. Their perspectives showed me ways to connect the underground electronic scene with broader Indian musical traditions without losing authenticity in either space.
The visual component had to match this ambition, and working with afterdark.xyz and their incredible team was crucial to bringing this vision to life. Together, we created a fully immersive 3D visual world that imagined a futuristic flavour of Indian expression. The custom LED content and 3D environments guided audiences through worlds of fire, face paint, data rituals, and underground avatars. We amplified facial expressions to surreal degrees where joy became clown-like, fear turned demonic, anger appeared divine. Every frame and color shift was mapped to the emotional arc of the music because I wanted the experience to feel like a unified piece rather than a DJ set with visuals.
Myles and his team at framelabs.in were crucial collaborators in designing the lighting and technical infrastructure that made this 3D world possible on the festival stage. Their understanding of how to translate our digital vision into physical space was essential to creating the immersion we were after. And eyeamsid, a longtime co-conspirator in bringing the world of Spryk to life through the camera and in many other ways, helped capture and extend this visual language beyond just the live performance.
Months of preparation went into building this world beyond just the performance. The trilogy of singles leading up to Lolla revealed different aspects of what we were creating. Social visuals, lyric videos, and design elements all connected to the larger mythology. Every piece had to feel like it belonged to the same universe we were constructing.
The response validated something I’d suspected: audiences were ready for Indian electronic music that embraced complexity without sacrificing impact. People didn’t need the music to be easily categorizable. They wanted something that felt authentic to the messy, multilingual, culturally dense reality of contemporary India.
This performance marked the beginning of a new creative framework for me—one that looks beyond traditional genre boundaries and standard festival formats. The world we introduced at Lollapalooza will continue expanding through music videos, documentation of the creative process, and touring versions adapted for different contexts.
This performance helped me bridge the many different worlds I operate in—from underground electronic music to traditional Indian culture, from intimate club settings to major festival stages. The show proved that these spaces don’t have to be separate; they can inform and strengthen each other when approached with the right intention and collaborators.
Two songs from this project are available now: “Bhaag” featuring Bharg and “Jiv Ekach Aahe” featuring Bamboy. Both tracks capture different aspects of the world we created at Lollapalooza, but they’re just the beginning. We have much more music from this project dropping throughout the year, each release expanding the mythology and sonic palette we established on that stage.
Follow @sprykmusic and @skipabeat.in for what comes next in this expanded universe.
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