GOAT, a three-day boutique music and arts festival, due to be held in Goa from January 26-29, features handpicked acts from all over the world and India. One of the artists repping India will be techno producer and DJ, BLOT (aka Gaurav Malaker, the founder of Qilla Records).
B.L.O.T., an acronym for Basic Love Of Things, used to be a two-piece electronic act with collaborator Avinash Kumar (a designer, visual artist, founder of Quicksand Studio and VJ) on board (Gaurav did the audio part, Avinash the visuals). Gaurav now tours alone and his set at GOAT will see him as a one-man act. We caught up with him to ask him what to expect. Here’s what he shared...
What BLOT fans can expect
He shared, “We had decided to make the move to a more music-centric performance act a few years ago, though the call to close the AV act was a more recent development. I’m still as focused as before on delivering a “feeling” (for the lack of a better term) that one gets at a BLOT! gig. I can’t really pinpoint what that is, but what I can say with some amount of trepidation is that it seems like it’s still around.”
Current USP
We asked him, with the visual element now gone, what’s his USP now? The answer, a terse and succinct “Just plain old (good?) music, I suppose.” Touché!
On his live set at GOAT2017
He didn’t expect it to come as soon, but supposes, “it’s the perfect testing ground for my ideas and it feels like the right time and space to just express myself with my sounds. I’ve spent hours and hours writing and producing what I think is the collection of my better work. I hope there are a few others who agree with that statement after the show. It’s all warm analog, melodic sounds with blissed out Arps and real big synth lines that I’ve obsessively crafted. I’ve organically ended up with flavours and strokes of all my influences into this one live set and I hope that I can be proud of it someday!”
Acts he’s excited about
Kiasmos, Giles Peterson, Hercules & Love Affair among others.
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