Name: Baalti
Members: Mihir Chauhan, Jaiveer Singh
Nationality: Indian
Current release: Baalti's Better Together EP is out via Seb Wildblood's All My Thoughts on June 28th 2023.
Recommendations: “Ramy”, the TV show; Anything by DJ Farsight

If you enjoyed this Baalti interview and would like to stay up to date with the duo and their music, visit them on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Jaiveer: Listening to music is definitely a very ‘body over mind’ experience for me. I’m usually not over-intellectualizing it, and just zoned in on how it makes me want to move, or just experiencing the raw emotion of the song.

I like fully immersive music environments a lot, like clubs. Love the feeling of being totally surrounded with sound on a massive system

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

Jaiveer: We’re both drummers and a lot of our first steps in music were based around percussion. You can probably hear a lot of that run through our music even today.

I value naive first steps a lot. For us, that’s where a lot of the creativity and excitement comes from, when we’re exploring sounds and styles we don’t have much experience in, or when we’re exploring a new plugin or synth and using it the “wrong” way and getting cool sounds out of it.

Even when it comes to mixing, some of the records we like a lot have mixes that sound weird and maybe not clean enough or whatever. But that’s what gives them their character.

I studied music theory for a while but Mihir plays totally by ear, and I think some of the melodies and chords he comes up with are so cool, and stuff I would’ve never come up with if trying to write music through that theory lens. So yeah, experience can weigh you down and set arbitrary constraints around what’s acceptable, it can limit your creativity. Beginner mindset for life!

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Mihir: 13-16 was when I first picked up drumming and I learned to play alongside my best friends who were picking up guitar or bass at the same time. The thing that felt incisive was that we’d practice and perform and share a lot of excitement about new skills we’d learn or new bands we’d discover together. I remember compulsively trying to figure out how to play drum parts of my favorite songs, and I feel like that taught me how to listen intentionally and analytically.

I feel a lot of the same things today but they just take different shapes. With Baalti, I’m still most energized and inspired when we’re discovering new genres or musical subcultures, or new production techniques. And my deep listening instincts are still around, but now I’m paying attention to arrangements and sound design more than drum patterns.

So the kinds of standout musical experiences I’m having now feel really similar in a lot of ways to the ones I was having when I was 13-16 and I think I’ve been pretty lucky to practice them in new forms.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Jaiveer: My laptop for sure. Learning to see my laptop and DAW as an instrument instead of just a recording device was a big shift. Embracing making machine music, and embracing the possibilities that come from being totally in the box were pivotal.

We don’t really believe in having expensive gear or hardware just for the sake of hardware. Music should be accessible to everyone, and the laptop to us represents the most democratized form of music yet - any kid with a pirated copy of Ableton can now make bangers from their bedroom.

The other thing with making laptop music is that you start to create your own instruments and processes as you go, and the processes and workflows you create become as much part of the art as the tracks themselves. It’s a bit like shifting the focus away from trying to write good music, and instead focusing on getting better at writing music.

Sometimes we spend entire weeks just curating samples, building synth patches and drum racks, so that when we’re feeling inspired we can basically write a new track in just one session.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Mihir: Sampling. Recontextualizing sounds from a certain era or place has always been an exciting reason to create. When I started producing I was almost exclusively doing sample flips and making hip hop beats, which kind of set the tone for how I produce today.

What’s special about sampling to me is feeling really whole when we bring sounds from home into spaces that inspire us today. And sampling’s also been my favorite way to discover loads of new tunes, taught me to listen differently, and showed me new ways to connect with music.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Jaiveer: I think that’s a good perspective to have. A lot of people, especially in electronic music, can tend to get quite focused on if everything sounds clean and “professional” and mixed the way they’re used to hearing things. I think that approach can be a bit boring, and honestly a bit narrow.

I think it’s way more fun to just think of the music in terms of overall feel and vibe instead - is it wobbly, sludgey, rezzy, slinky, metallic, wiggly, wavey - and thinking of music in these terms also lets you break free from genre.

A lot of times when we’re DJing we find that two tunes from totally different genres can still work really well together because they’re both “rezzy” or “wobbly” or whatever.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

Jaiveer: Simple melodies and complex rhythms, or complex melodies and simple rhythms. But not both.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

Jaiveer: I think different ideas and songs are best served by different styles. It all depends on what’s the story of the song and how is the arrangement style suited to telling that story (shouts to Martyn for his wisdom on this topic!).

Like on our first record, the opener ‘Aame’, is really short because it’s kind of just a vibe setter and a statement of our arrival in the world. It builds and builds and then at its peak, instead of going into a big drop it just ends.

Some people have asked us if there’s a longer version available lol. But that song ends over there because within the context of the rest of the EP, it makes sense to have it as just an intro.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

It usually starts with sampling. We’re always sampling, and kind of building up our sample library from records and youtube.

Then, when we’re trying to actually make a track, we grab something from the library that feels like it has enough flavour to be the tonal or melodic or percussive core of a track, and start building loops around it. We usually spend a lot of time working out the drums first, and then end up making lots of different “scenes” or vibes, and we pull a lot from our sample library when we’re doing this.

With our track “Buttons” - It started with us chopping a Bengali vocal sample that we really liked and trying on different breaks and percussion on top from our sample library.



We were experimenting with how we chop vocals and trying different ways to highlight emotions in the voice. We also made a lots of different versions of the drums, and ran them through lots of different processing chains.

Once we had that we created a few different “scenes” with different pairings of percussion, breaks, and vocals that we thought worked well together, and then did a crude arrangement of how the track and the story could progress.

The bit that finally tied it all together was the growly bass, probably inspired by some of the more ravey stuff we were listening to. Once we had all that, I think the last thing we added were some textural elements, glitchy automation, and other “candy” that glued things together and made transitions feel better.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

There’s a few binary tests we run after stepping away from a track for a while - does it still evoke the same level of emotion, does that section still hit like it used to? I like noticing and trusting our immediate reactions. It’s a good method to help us feel confident about creative decisions, and even technical ones like A/B testing two mixes.

We’ve also experimented with taking half-baked songs and playing them in our live sets. We’ll be able to test different arrangements or come up with something unexpected on the fly with raw ingredients that we might not have in the studio. It’s definitely a chaotic way to experiment, but recordings of our live sets have influenced a lot of our final arrangements and ideas.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Mihir: I’ve always felt like my expanding-my-music-taste journey brought a lot of open-mindedness, curiosity and exploration to other parts of my life. I didn’t listen to electronic music till the end of high school, and it took a looong time to shake my purist-metalhead phase. It took digging deeper into, and even trying to recreate a lot of music that was foreign to me to start appreciating and vibing to it.

So yeah, I think breaking out of that led me to open myself up to a ton of non music-related experiences that I would’ve probably frowned at otherwise. Like maybe I would’ve been a way pickier eater, or taken fewer academic risks if I hadn’t learned to let in new and weird music into my life.

The way I live now is also super influenced by things I’ve picked up while checking out new genres and scenes in different places. Jam bands in upstate New York, indie electronic in Mumbai, house and techno in San Francisco, bass music in Santa Cruz - it’s been fun to dip into different worlds, learn about what brings people together in them, and have that stuff rub off on you.

Do you feel as though writing or performing 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?

Mihir: Any task can stop feeling mundane if you frame it differently.

Where and how was the coffee grown, why did you pick that mug, who’s the coffee for? There are a lot of stories and choices behind that action, and I think writing a piece of music isn’t any different than making a cup of coffee in that sense.

Someone out there probably expresses themself through coffee making in a way that’s as meaningful to them, as I do through writing a track. Music just happens to be the medium that feels most stimulating to me and how I like to express myself.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Mihir: Kaki King - "Until We Felt Red." Moves me every time and it’s a super random song for what I’m usually listening to.



Jaiveer: Loveless by My Bloody Valentine makes me feel like that. A lot of shoegaze and dreampop honestly.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Mihir: Fairer and more equitable structures and systems for artists to operate in. Diverse lineups. More thoughtful cultural crossovers. Less gatekeeping.