Name: Sahej Bakshi aka Dualist Inquiry
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Producer, guitarist
Current Release: Dualist Inquiry's new single "All There Is" is out via Dualism. A full-length album, When We Get There, will follow on February 16th 2024.
Recommendations:
1. Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra - an otherworldly 46 minute long piece that defies description. A must listen on lossless audio with good headphones or speakers.
2. Suddenly (album) by Caribou - Caribou and this album in particular have been a huge inspiration for me over the last few years. I love how the mood manages to be sweet but never saccharine. It’s electronic music, but it feels so organic.

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Dualist Inquiry and would like to know more, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and twitter.

For a deeper dive, read our previous Dualist Inquiry interview.
 


Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I feel like for me, the impulse to create has come from very different places at different times - it’s closely linked with my relationship to music itself, and that relationship has gone through some major ups and downs over the last 13 years that I’ve been a full time musician.

Whatever the state of my emotional world, one thing that remains true is that I create because I enjoy being in my studio. It makes me feel alive and gives me a feeling of agency. It feels good to work on or write what could shape the next chapter of my life in many ways.

When I’m feeling down, creating music can be quite a utilitarian tool I use to make myself feel better - I find that I often write songs which have the mood that I wish I had. So I’ll write more upbeat and optimistic tunes when I’m feeling down because it makes me feel better.

Kind of like cooking something delicious for yourself to help with the blues. It works for me.     

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I thought I was going to write an album in 2021. But as I got close to finishing the tunes I realized that it was not “it” because it lacked emotional depth. The same thing happened in 2022.

In 2023, I decided not to attempt an album again, and just started writing music day by day, not thinking about the bigger plan. That’s when the album actually came about.

The planning stage kicked in much later, when it became obvious that I did finally have my next album in the pipeline - that’s when my management and team come into the picture. But until this stage, it was a very personal, unplanned, intuitive thing.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Yes, very much so. When I’m getting ready to enter a new writing phase, I’ll usually spend a couple of days just sharpening my tools, so to speak. That means I’ll update my sample libraries, explore some new plugins or tools, improve my DAW template, learn a complicated piece of gear that I never had time to get into or maybe buy a new piece of gear.

I see it as the musical equivalent of mise en place, separating the preparation from the cooking keeps the process nice and orderly and I think that helps the quality of the end product as well.   

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

The first step in getting into a creating mindset is being alone and physically present in my studio. I need things to be quiet for a little while before I can hear myself think.

I love a cup of coffee in the morning and enjoy some scented herbs as well. It certainly does help me disconnect from the outside world.  

What do you start with? And, to quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I would definitely say discovered. For me, the rewarding part is finding a new musical way to express my thoughts and feelings which have already been expressed millions (or billions) or times before.

It’s like drawing a sunset or outdoor scenery - everyone draws one at some point but the fun part is to really drill deep into the musical and technical aspects of it so I can do it in a way that draws on a lot of influences but still stands on its own as an original piece of work.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

With this album in particular, I went back to writing instrumental music while using found sound spoken word or vocal samples in a few key places.

This record turned out to be a very individual, personal experience, kind of writing a journal. I briefly wondered if I should add feature a vocalist in a couple of songs but it never came to be. When We Get There just came together as a solo, instrumental record.  

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

I think lyrics are good when they sound good phonetically, have a rhythmic structure that’s interesting and memorable, have a meaning that paints a picture but doesn’t spell things out too literally and that avoid cliches.

I have the highest respect for lyricists and writers who are able to create succinct, multilayered and novel lyrics. While I hope to be able to do that one day, these days I find myself focused on the instrumental part of the music.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I didn’t really have much control over the narrative of this album. I think I used to be a lot more controlling of my audience-facing narrative when I was a bit younger, and part of the challenge this time for me was to loosen up a bit and allow myself to be seen in a less curated way.

For this album, the source of material and inspiration was my own life, particularly the events of the last couple of years. My wife and I went through some high highs and low lows, and eventually it was those experiences that informed the story I ended up telling.  

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

This is exactly what I feel happened to me with this album. One weekend last December, I ended up writing three songs in quick succession. They came from the same sonic and emotional space, one that was different from the sounds I’d been exploring until then.

I knew that this direction held a lot of potential, and so my first reaction was to protect it by not sharing it with anyone, not listening to it outside of the studio, and by not rushing it towards the finish line until I could figure out what it was going to be. I waited many months until the rest of the album had taken shape before I felt enough clarity to go and “finish” the first three songs which had defined the direction.

In other words, when a precious new direction opens up, I treat it very carefully and with a lot of respect so I don’t overwork and ruin it, as I’ve done many times in the past.     

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Being in a healthy and fulfilling creative flow has become an extremely high priority in my life, one which has a direct impact on my feeling of emotional well being.

I see it as not so different from the process of breathing or digesting food. When my creative “system” is working well, I feel at ease, motivated, positive, and my experience of anxiety and overthinking become noticeably better.

I’ve also been through a period of years where I wasn’t in a connected, creative state, and it was quite excruciating. Like not being able to breathe properly, or like being constipated. Being “stuck” like that led me on a really challenging journey to rediscover my creativity and relationship with music.     

When you're in the studio to record a piece, how important is the actual performance and the moment of performing the song still in an age where so much can be “done and fixed in post?“

It depends on what’s being recorded. If it’s a lead vocal or instrument like a guitar, keyboard, drums etc. then I’m a huge believer in getting the actual performance right. No amount of work in post can bring back the emotion, rhythm or musicality that a well performed recording would have.

However a lot of times I’ll record “rough samples” for myself, where my recordings are meant to provide me with raw material to chop, granulate, reorder and otherwise process beyond recognition. It’s not the same as “fixing in post”, more like “meant to mess with in post”.   

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

It’s extremely important for me to step away from a piece for some amount of time before coming back to it. Usually, I work on a handful of songs at the same time, and I keep jumping from one track to the other as it helps keep my perspective fresh.

I'm very conscious of how songs can be “overcooked”, much like food. It was an eye opening moment for me when I realized that you can very much overcook or burn your song like a dish, and then it’s really hard to trace your steps back.

I read somewhere that once an idea is born, we only have so many good hours with it, post which things start to go sideways. This includes time spent listening to it out of the studio. I think it was Rick Rubin who said that one should not engage with a work in progress unless one is actively engaged in making it better.

Even recording a solo song is usually a collaborative process. Tell me about the importance of trust between the participants, personal relationships between musicians and engineers and the freedom to perform and try things – rather than gear, technique or “chops” - for creating a great song.

This is my third album, and for the first time I felt like I needed to bring an engineer on board to provide me with technical and musical feedback through the process. That engineer was Krishna Jhaveri, who’s also a close friend, and in retrospect, it was the best decision ever.

The process didn’t feel so lonely and it helped prevent me from getting to a place of frustration and confusion, something that’s happened almost every time I’ve worked on a large body of work on my own. I’d send Krisha my mixes in progress, and he would respond with musical and technical notes. He’d often catch issues that completely escaped my attention, which saved me loads of time and effort later.

We went back and forth almost daily for 4-5 weeks straight. It was absolutely critical for me to have a trusted ear on the project with me, and I wouldn’t want to do it any other way next time.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

In my case, the songwriting, production and mixing are part of the same process as my music is very production heavy and the mix feels like an extension of the production. But that’s not necessarily the case with say, a singer-songwriter or pop artist.

If you’re handing the song over from one professional to the next, I think it's key that each step is executed at a high level of quality for it to all come together nicely in the end. When everyone nails their part is when the song gets its best shot.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

There was a period of a few months after I finished writing the music and before the release process began. That period of time felt really strange because, as someone in my inner circle told me - “You’ve put all your energy and being into this piece of work, and now it’s done but you don’t know what it is or how others are going to relate to it.”

It was an uncomfortable place but i dealt with that feeling of uncertainty and vulnerability by moving forward and writing some more music. I’ve learned from experience that’s the best way to take pressure off any one release is to keep writing and plan the next one, and to not dwell on any piece of work for too long.  

Music is a language, but like any language, it can lead to misunderstandings. In which way has your own work – or perhaps the work of artists you like or admire - been misunderstood? How do you deal with this?

That’s an interesting question. Most of my music has some emotional meaning behind it, but I actually prefer not to share too much about it because I’d like to give the listener a chance to have their own experience and interpretation of it.

It helps that my music is mostly instrumental and so it can feel quite open ended in that way. But I actively want people to have their own experience of my music rather than to see it through my lens. That’s to say I’ve never felt misunderstood as such, because I intended my music to be open ended.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I genuinely believe that cooking food and producing music are such similar processes. While doing one, I always think in terms of the other and understand one while improving at the other.

Making a cup of great coffee is indeed a complex and precise process, but for me, the analogy works better when I replace coffee with a complex stew, for example. It’s the layering of individual ingredients into something that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s the way a song can be so full of so many emotions at the same time. I love how the layers can be experienced repeatedly and you still keep discovering new flavors and sounds even after the 50th listen/bite.