NH7 Weekender: From The F16s to Zoya; here are the Indie acts that you can look forward to

The NH7 Weekender offers music fans the best festival experience that India has to offer. The NH7 Weekender trip starts with the Shillong edition, and ends its annual runwith the highly anticapted Pune edition.

This year along with the usual famous artists like Steven Wilson, Anoushka Shankar,Papon and Karsh Kale Collective, there are a few hidden gems of indie music that the festival has to offer. Here’s our list for the top indie artists to look forward to:

Skyharbor

Performing this weekend is the metal rock band whose members come from different continents. Keshav Dhar takes the lead of the band Skyharbor, and has become Indian DIY metal’s poster boy according to The Rolling Stone . His mix of djent-based riffing, ambient soundscapes and dense, layered guitarwork has got the attention of some of the biggest names in international metal. The new vocalist Eric Emery lend a new power and lease to the band.

The band has spent most of the last 4 years travelling around the world performing at eminent festivals like Euroblast Festival (Germany), UK Tech Fest, Download Festival(UK), Dissonance Festival (Italy) and Graspop Metal Meeting (Belgium) to name a few.

Goddess Gagged

The alternative metal band Goddess Gagged is all set to perform on for the Nh7 Weekender. The five piece act consists of manager and bassist Krishna Jhaveri, vocalist Siddharth Basrur, guitarists Arman Menzies and Devesh Dayal, and drummer Jeremy D’Souza.

Devesh Dayal descibes the band as , “It’s got it’s roots in hardcore music, but we draw influence from various other genres like electronica and indie too.” and the band’s influences include, “Krishna is a big fan of Explosions in the Sky, while I am more into heavy bands with old school influences”

Nucleya

Udyan Sagar who is better known as his moniker ‘Nucleya’; says the inspiration behind the name was an old email password that he thought was pretty cool.

Nucleya, who is one of the most popular EDM artists in India, is inspired by the likes of  Ilayaraja, Nitin Sawhney and AR Rahman.

Nucleya’s previous work includes being a part of the very popular 2000s band Bandish Projekt. He says about making music, “While I was growing up, there was such good music being made all around. It was hard not to get inspired to become a musician during a time like that.”

Nucleya’s style of music, a mixture of EDM and Indian classical; is very unique to him. He says about his musical style, “It’s a mixture of electronic beats, Indian street sounds from various parts of the country and Indian instruments, used in very simple ways to form catchy hooks and melodies.”

The F16s

The Chennai-bred quintet, Vikram Yesudas, Abhinav Krishnaswamy, Harshan Radhakrishnan, Sashank Manohar and Josh Fernandez, began its journey in 2012 and skyrocketed to indie-fame after winning the Converse Rubber Tracks Competition.

The Chennai electro-rockers  says about F16s’s music , “What else is left to sing about than the most basic things such as love, pain, anger… That’s something everybody can relate to. We always come up with the music first, so lyrics and vocals come much later. There’s no deep thought; I didn’t go up to a hill, pitch a tent and play for seven days and then have a revelation. But it did happen once.”

Zoya

The Berklee grad Kickstarter-funded and self-produced her debut album The Girl Who Used To Live In My Room has been doing the rounds of festivals since two years.

Mohan , who has begun to feature on festival line-ups noticed how distracted gig audiences can be. So she found a way to bring their attention back to the stage via spoken word. In the middle of a song, Mohan stops the music short and begins to perform poetry, effectively snuffing out the stray chit-chat.