That is the overarching theme of Siva Baskaran's debut album, Nature of the Self, which chronicles the journey of self-discovery that the time-travelling central character undergoes
Sometime in the future, let’s say 500 years down the line, human beings will be just masses of information stored within a walking-talking body. Our sentient abilities will be limited to our genetic coding. The ability to mould ourselves according to the environment we live in will be negated. And emotions — such as happiness, contempt and disgust — will all be things of the past. But we’ll have the ability to time-travel, with one man going all the way back to 1947 to find out how the information in his particular system came to be stored.
That is the overarching theme of Siva Baskaran’s debut album, Nature of the Self, which chronicles the journey of self-discovery that the time-travelling central character undergoes. Baskaran, whose stage name is Native Indian — and who’ll be playing a launch gig at Lower Parel this week — tells us, “The whole story was born out of a sum of incoherent experiences I had had, such as a random dream or an image I’d seen while staring out of the window of a cab. I’m also naturally curious about futurism and the technology that might be expected in the next 1,000 years.”
He adds that the narrative took around two years to develop. The album’s sonic sensibilities, though, go back all the way to when the Chennai native was taught Carnatic music as a child. Genre-wise, it falls broadly under the hip-hop bracket. But it’s also a mish-mash of all his diverse musical influences — ranging from Linkin Park to Messhugah — and is thus a rare offering that can be described as having a death metal-meets-Snoop Dogg-meets-Ilyaraja kind of sound. It is, in other words, far removed from the desi rap that seems to be all the rage these days. And Baskaran tells us that volume two of Nature of the Self — which will reveal the impact that time-travelling has had on the central character — is expected sometime next year. But, let’s see what the future unfolds.
On: April 4, 9 pm
At: Levi’s Lounge, Mathuradas Mill Compound, Lower Parel.
Log on to: insider.com
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