Name: Rushab Nandha
Nationality: Kenya-based
Occupation: Composer, sound artist, producer, mastering engineer
Current release: Rushab Nandha's new album Tear is out via Dragon’s Eye.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: I would definitely direct everyone to EarthSonic.

If you enjoyed this Rushab Nandha interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



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?

Eyes open.

If I’m listening more intently, I freeze. Like I’m in stasis. The moment is all about—as David Lynch famously says—“fishing for ideas.”

Movement of any kind takes me out of it. Or maybe I just can’t multi-task.

How does listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

I’m partial to headphone listening. That intimacy that comes with it. There’s a lack of judgement. Whether it’s casual or critical listening; whether it’s listening to my own work or that of others, headphones serve me with a deep sense of solace. Stereo systems force me to fixate.

With my own work, given that every space reacts unpredictably to sound, I’m burdened with the thought that comes with presenting my musical works through a stereo system in a shared space. Not of what listeners might think about them, but rather what I might think about them! The thought of actively exposing my works to a setting that could highlight any of their apparent flaws is, well, uncomfortable.

I like comfort. And I like predictability. And in a bid to protect my sanity (pronounced vanity), headphones provide me with both comfort and predictability. Call it defensiveness. Or call it insecurity—that’s always fun! But headphones make the listening experience for me.

That said, I do love a LOUD car when driving alone—and that’s a kind of stereo system listening!

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

Some of the albums I’ve been loving from the past couple of years:

Djrum - Under Tangled Silence;
Iglooghost - Tidal Memory Exo;
Nazar – Demilitarize;



These exhibit some of the most intricate and inventive programming I’ve ever heard. They’re production masterclasses!

corto.alto - 30/108;
Jake Long - City Swamp;



These two are eclectic, aesthetic-filled affairs. Both brazen with their basses!

Lawrence English - Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds ...



... and Yann Novak – Continuity.



And the final two, respectively, represent the two ends of my ambient spectrum. The former expressive. The latter contemplative. But both to the point of near collapse (no pun intended), and yet incredibly patient with themselves, and we, the listeners.

[Read our corto.alto interview]
[Read our corto.alto interview about 30/108]
[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read our Lawrence English interview about sound]
[Read our Yann Novak interview]

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

I’m trained in the Tabla and so I find myself reacting strongly to rhythm.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

You ever hear the sound of a marching snare drum in a highly reverberant indoor space? Well, that! It’s piercingly irritating!

What I do love, however, is when “organic” instruments sound heavily digital.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

The London underground. It’s filled with all kinds of hums, whistles and screams (I’m sure that would be true of all underground rail systems). That, being a mode of transportation foreign to me (so not everyday), I find deeply fascinating sonically.

Recordings of the London underground informed the tonal palette of my EP, Fragments.



Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

Unfortunately, no.

I’ve been in many caves, but nothing to report other than the expected resonances and echoes.

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I’m a homebody, and because all my work is digital in nature, it has, thus far, been recorded at home.

And I intend to keep it that way for the foreseeable future wherever home may be!

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

The thesis behind my work is based on relation. It’s about finding complementarity within disparate sounds. A concept founded entirely on the basis of being sound first.

I have no particular (Western) musical ability. I can’t identify a chord to save my life! Therefore, before any music can present itself, all I really have is sound. And if I intend to write music that is meaningful, I ought to take advantage of that; that lack of a theoretical sensibility to seek out the unorthodox methods that would enable me to write said meaningful music.

I describe my debut full-length, Singing Inferno To Angels, as an exercise in design, in that every sound heard on it catalysed from a digital piano.



And now, its follow-up, Tear, on Dragon’s Eye Recordings, evolves those ideals by way of deconstruction.

Tear is less a collection of tracks, more a conceptual design study rendered through sound; it’s still an exercise in design, but it’s also an exploration of the elasticity of form, a pursuit of beauty, and a reminder that fragility is a virtue.

In that regard, working with sound is, indeed, sculptural.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

It’s paramount. I live in Nairobi and when I think of taking a break, I think of our beaches or our national parks. Where noise is a far cry from the ordinary.

I believe a correlation could be made between the overall health of a small, remote town, and that of a noisy, dense city, that could tell us enough about the acoustic health of the society or environment.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

During my time as a student in Cape Town, one instance of a hike saw me scaling down the Skeleton Gorge Waterfall.

At the head of the gorge was something unlike anything I’d ever seen, a white-sand beach with water from the Hely-Hutchinson Reservoir the colour of copper. A beach atop a mountain with copper coloured water! With views of the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, descending the waterfall meant traversing steep wooden ladders, and wet and slippery boulder-strewn watercourses to the sound of falling water.

I cannot overstate how terrifying it was crawling down a waterfall and hearing the crashes of water below. How moving it was. I’ve always been drawn to the sounds of water. I wrote a trio of tracks earlier this year that I liken to a sonic adaptation of Asako Narahashi’s Half Awake And Half Asleep In The Water.

It’s sounds of water at “various depths” synthesised using spectral synthesis that, naturally, veer into the territorial waters of microtonality. I don’t think it will see the light of day, but it lent itself, foundationally, to an EP titled, SHED, that is set for release on Adventurous Music next year.

Also, for the better part of the last decade, I’ve been writing an original musical titled “Pani Puri” with my collaborators, Aleya Kassam and Eric Wainaina. In it, the Indian Ocean acts as a carrier of memory that speaks to the deep-seated issues of race and classism found within the South Asian-Kenyan and African-Kenyan communities.

Told through the lens of an interracial love story, the musical, developed as part of the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative, explores the generational differences that have often been used to justify the lack of cultural assimilation between the two communities. “Pani Puri” is a brown-black love story that invites us into a re-imagined fusion of East African and South Asian sounds and music, and having the Indian Ocean play a role in it is ever so moving!

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

Interspecies communication has been proven possible. But if we’re talking human-animal, I just don’t think we’ll like what they’ll have to say about us.

I look to EarthSonic and all the many, many things they’re doing to advance our creativity with nature.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I’m afraid I don’t have anything novel to offer with regard to precautions other than the tried and tested methods of taking regular breaks during prolonged listening, and avoiding long exposure to high sound levels at live music events, which—some might argue is to my detriment—I don’t attend many of anyway!

Thankfully though, I don’t suffer from tinnitus or hyperacusis, but despite working predominantly on headphones, I do everything I can to preserve the integrity of my hearing.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Well, sound is community building; memory carrying; preservation; communication. But silence, like rest, is resistance. We’re incentivised to keep listening. To keep up.

In the spirit of Burial’s words: “I quite like it when you listen to music in your headphones, and you’ve got real life going on around you,” that idea of “silencing” the “real life going on around you” in favour of “music in your headphones” is, in a sense, resistance.

Admittedly, while I’m mindful of silence, I can’t say I envelope myself in it as much as I’d like to (talk about acoustic health).

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Beyond the infinite instances we engage our sense of hearing, and subject our ears to, sound, in all its omnipresence, is constantly being met by us. Consciously or unconsciously.

But how different our world would be if we paid more attention to it is a world yet to be discovered, unfortunately.