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'Touring in India is always special'

Updated on: 12 October,2014 02:39 AM IST  | 
Deepali Dhingra |

On their third visit to India, this time for the Bass Camp Festival, Berlin-based global bass act Symbiz Sound is on the lookout to collaborate with some interesting Indian musicians

'Touring in India is always special'

Zhi MC, Buddysym and ChrisImbiss

The Berlin-based, Korean-German brothers, Buddysym and ChrisImbiss, form Symbiz Sound, one of the most exciting live bass music acts today. Headliners at the Bass Camp Festival’s 12th edition, along with their longtime collaborator Zhi MC, they can’t wait to be in India and maybe, even collaborate with some Indian musicians. Excerpts from the interview with Buddysym:


Zhi MC, Buddysym and ChrisImbiss
Zhi MC, Buddysym and ChrisImbiss

Q. Tell us about your earliest musical influences?
A. Chris and I have learned classical violin and piano from the age of six and later, during our teenage years, shifted to popular music. Chris has always produced hip hop beats and dancehall, I played in different ska-punk bands and did some excursions to jazz and contemporary classic. Zhi has many years of experience in drum and bass MCing and rapping.

Q. How would you describe your musical genre?
A. Our genre is not clearly defined and we incorporate all the styles that influenced us before. Our productions change with time according to what we find inspiring at the moment, but the basis will always somehow be offbeat-oriented and rooted in the great reggae family. What are genres anyway? Popular culture has always created new names, abandoned old ones, retrospectively renamed styles, and so on. Maybe for now, we could call our music bass music or global bass. That sounds close enough to a genre description, and open enough to allow us to do anything we feel is fresh.

Q. This is your third visit to India. How has your experience been with the Indian audience?
A. Touring in India is always special for us. In our past trips, we saw some beautiful places, met great fellow artistes, visited big festivals, clubs, bars and street corners. Whether it’s buying the latest Hindi pop CDs at highway stops, eating endlessly in a Mumbai samosa corner shop, riding a ferris wheel in old Delhi or playing a gig overlooking the ocean in Goa — trips to India have been overwhelming with impressions and a great source of inspiration to us.

Q. Do you have plans of collaborating with any Indian artistes?
A. Indian music culture is so overwhelmingly rich that there are plenty of artistes to collaborate with. Let’s see who we bump into. A hotel room can always be a recording booth as well. We have planned to meet up with members of the great Reggae Rajahs crew to shoot material for a new video.


The Bass Camp Festival XIII kicks off in Mumbai on October 17 at blueFrog, Lower Parel and later, heads to Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and Nepal


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