City-based DJ and music producer Krunal Ghorpade aka Kratex is your quintessential sound nerd, but with an interesting catch. Instead of boasting of complex analogue synthesizers or limited-edition gear that can cost one a fortune, Ghorpade talks passionately of a different kind of collection — a mammoth repository of vintage Marathi songs that he has collected over a period of seven years with the aim to remix them into house music tracks. As the artiste gears to bring his sub-genre that he fondly calls M-House to a venue in Worli, he breaks down what it takes to build a new subgenre from scratch.

Over a phone call from his home studio in Virar, the 28-year-old reveals the story behind his first hit that kickstarted his journey in May — a remix of the popular Marathi nursery rhyme, Mamachya gavala zau ya. The artiste reveals, “It was just another day and the rhyme was being played at an event in my neighbourhood. It quickly turned into an earworm, and I decided to put it on a house track that I was working on.” Ghorpade’s chance experiment now stands at six lakh views across the artiste’s social media platforms. “Remixing tracks that I grew up with almost feels like an instinctive process to me. Once I realised that people were taking a liking to it, I decided to go big. I release a track every weekend now,” he shares.