Picture: Sam Mohan
Q-1. Take us through your style of music?
I always believed that a DJ’s job is to involve the crowd in the music that they play. Personally I enjoy listening to jazz blues, lounge and when it come to playing it’s old school hip-hop, deep house, tech house, progressive and big room sounds. I like keeping my sets very happy and energetic with deep and funky sounds.
Q-2. Take us through your journey of when you first starting DJing to creating music?
I started DJing back in 1999. I was 15 years old and at cousins Sangeet party, I saw this guy standing behind a machine and turning knobs and you know changing CDs and playing through cassettes (yeah, those days were the days) and I stood behind him watching him make everyone move and dance to his ‘tunes’. That’s when I decided this is what I wanna do, so I got in touch with him and asked him if he could teach me. And it all started from there. I started playing at this club called Underdeck at the Taj in Hyderabad while I was still in school. After that I decided I wanted to do sound engineering course, so I moved to Mumbai in 2003 to train at the Digital Academy (Andheri East). But I never wanted to lose my touch in DJing so I met DJ Nasha looking for a job and he put me across to Reji as he was the chief instructor at DJ Nasha’s workstation then. So I met up with him and started teaching DJing over there and played at a few clubs in Mumbai. Then in October 2005, another opportunity knocked at my door. I got a call from Olive in Bandra and soon I became their resident DJ for their new branch in Bengaluru. In 2007 I won the Times Music war of DJs from the city and came third in the country. I next moved to ICE Bar at Vivanta by Taj, in 2008 as the resident DJ. I have also played an opening set for a lot of international DJs like Dimitri Vegas, Wolfpack, Jerome Isma Ae to name a few. In December 2013 I was in for new challenges, I quit Ice bar which was one of the hardest things to do but you gotta move on for bigger challenges and have been freelancing since then.
My love for creating music was always there and even after so many years in the industry, I learn something new every day. I believe in creating music while DJing. I also love producing deep house, tech house, progressive music, but I do experiment with all kinds of music.
Q-3. What made you move back to Mumbai?
Nothing could have been better for a DJ than a city that never sleeps. I moved back here because Mumbai is a land of opportunities… well it’s called the New York of India. Bengalure wasn’t challenging enough anymore so I moved back to Mumbai to spread my wings.
Q-4. Are you working on anything new that you can talk about?
Oh yes, I’m definitely working on a lot of new things. Apart from producing music, I’m working on my own record label to offer a platform to the upcoming artists/producers. And if everything goes right, it’ll go live before the year ends.
Q-6. What will you be playing at Beat Blender?
I will be blending a lot of deep, tech, progressive and maybe some big room sounds, but it’s all gonna be happy, energetic and bouncy.
- Cacth DJ Vanshi man the console at The Little Door, Andheri on August 7, 9 pm onwards.
