India is home to several artistes and music makers who have made it big on the international scale. Rishab Joshi and Prayag Mehta of Lost Stories are two such people who have taken Indian EDM to the international music audience. The duo, which was ranked 52 on DJ Mag’s top 100 polls in 2016, was in Bengaluru recently at The Park to entertain the city’s music-loving crowd.
Rishab takes time out ahead of the performance to narrate the experiences of Lost Stories, “I come from a musical background. My father is a musician. I was always experimenting with music and new electronics. Eventually I started making my own music. I met Prayag online on a music forum and I sent him my tunes. He liked it and that’s how we started collaborating. At that time Prayag was already making a lot of noise in the Indian music scene as a producer. That’s how Lost Stories begain.”
On the nuances that make a DJ tick in the EDM scene, he says: “An act needs to be well packaged these days for it to be successful. There needs to be good production and a unique style of music. A lot of people just follow trends with music and no one innovates. But we wanted to make our own sound and have our own unique style of DJ-ing. That’s what made us stand apart from the rest of the scene.”
“We try to play tunes with a vibe that will take the audience back to the old days and make them nostalgic. It takes a while to integrate that into an EDM set. There are moments when people are completely awed by our sets, and that’s what we want.” This is also something that the duo encourages Dj-ing novices to do. “We have an academy where we teach music and at every mentoring session, we tell people that the world does not need another Tiësto or another Martin Garrix. What the world needs is a ‘you’. We encourage them to make their own style of music and a unique way of DJ-ing. That’s the only thing that’s going to set them apart from everyone else.”
The DJ duo has performed at noteworthy venues across the globe from Tommorowland to Sunburn. On playing on home soil, Rishab reveals: “We’ve played all over the world but the energy you find in India is irreplaceable. People genuinely love electronic dance music here. It’s been eight to 10 years since EDM properly took off in India but still, the vibe is as fresh as it was 10 years ago. India is definitely our favourite place to play.”
The aim, Rishab claims, is to “put India’s name out there on the global field. We wanted the world to know that there is good music coming from India. Not just Bollywood, but some international quality dance music. We are some of the only Indians who are in the EDM scene at an international level at the moment. We hope that changes and more Indian musicians start getting noticed.”
