Can you tell us how you got started in music and art? We'd love to know more about your background and journey.
Revant - I have been drawing for as long as I can remember, I started working as an artist in the Music scene in India at the age of 16, I had read an article about “Illustrators” ( I did not know that was a thing at the time) and the role they played in making album art and posters in the scene and I really wanted to be a part of that. I was always interested in music and wanted to originally be a musician so art was a way for me to be involved in the scene. I started making music in 2019 when a friend showed me you could make music on a smartphone, shortly after which Rana Ghosh from Reproduce artist asked me to play a set at a Listening Room in Kolkata where I used to manage the gate and collect tickets. I have not stopped since.
Your Artistic endeavour "Head on Stick" style is known for its bold colours and surrealism. How did you develop this style, and can you describe your creative process? Also what’s the story behind the logo?
Revant - I have had a variety of influences, ranging from comics, animated movies, as well as psychedelic and punk music from the 70s and 80s which has influenced my work both visually and ideologically. I like working with bright colors and lines as I feel that it adds a sense of accessibility and automatically triggers a very strong response in the viewer, which you can then play with and use to go into deeper subjects. I started using a lot of these characters around the time when I was making my first zine, the primary character Bimol, plays the role of a character that just watches, with its real intention unknown. The idea of the character is to place it in different environments, without any specific purpose, but just as something that exists.
How has living in Mumbai and previously in Kolkata influenced your art? Do the cities’ cultures and pace impact your work?
Revant - Yeah, all my work is extremely personal so it is heavily inspired by what I am going through, the headspace I am in, the people around me and so on. So I think a lot of that is very evident in what I do. My work changes completely when I get a change of space, or even if I am in a different headspace.
You've worked with ONNO, Reproduce Sessions, and curated for Noods and HCKR. How has your sound evolved over time, and how would you describe your musical identity now?
Revant - I don't quite have a musical identity that I personally fully identify with, mainly my music for me now feels like an amalgamation of everything I was exploring in my first 4 years making music. So yeah, I would say my sound has evolved a lot over time. A lot of the stuff I used to make, or made when I was starting out still appeals to me, and I can see it in my new stuff, But a lot of my older music I feel I also cannot relate to anymore. So I think any kind of artistic journey for me has been a constant process, and the context in which I am creating plays a huge role in the outcome it will have. From around 2019 to 2020 my music was very heavily influenced by Noise music, but I feel it was also a direct reflection of my physical and mental health at the time. In 2021 , after I moved into my hometown, which is a remote city near Kolkata, a lot of the music I was making was much quieter and ambient. A lot of the music I make now is again different and I think it keeps changing. I approach every project I am doing with a completely different mindset. I am really bad at doing the same idea more than once.
What inspired you to start the label ‘Biswa Bangla Noise’? Is there a deeper meaning or cause behind your releases and curations?
Revant - I started BBN in 2020, at the time I was very active in Noise and Harsh Noise netlabel circuits online, mainly Bandcamp labels. I wanted to create a label like that that was based out of Bengal, with Bengali artists. At the time I barely knew anybody making noise music so me and a few friends started posting our own music from different monikers, kind of creating this fictional world of Bengali noise music. I had pretty much abandoned it until we released Bengal Chemicals last year and it completely blew up without any promotion, this made me look that way again. The scene in Bengal has a lot more artists now so we have been focusing on releasing original music only now.
What does a typical day look like for you? Do your spray painting, painting, and music-making intersect? How do you create a cohesive sonic and visual experience?
Revant - I spend a lot of time indoors, and have a close circuit of very few people I like interacting with on a daily basis. Art for me is a very what am I in the mood for today type of situation, where it totally depends on what I feel like doing and I will either go out to paint, or make music, or do something else. Sometimes I have something I will draw or shoot, and I know what kind of song I want it to be an artwork for, or I will make a song know exactly what type of art I want it to go with so a lot of it intersects in that way. The album art for MOSS was a photo I shot in 2021, that I never posted but knew I wanted as album art one day. When I was done with the album it just made sense to finally use it. Doing multiple things also deeply affects the relationships and approaches I have with every medium, I will do something while making music sometimes and it just ideologically connects to when I am drawing, and vice versa.
Tell us about your EP 'Moss'. What was your approach to producing these tracks, and did you face any
challenges during the process?
Revant - I wrote and produced most of the EP while house hunting in Mumbai earlier this year. I was couchsurfing with multiple people and was just generally very stressed with how things were going and would come back home dog tired every night, having seen like 10 horrible houses and completely drained. A lot of that time was just me questioning everything in my life and I think that sentiment was a huge driving factor for this EP. I found a lot of comfort in that process of sitting for 6-7 hours at a stretch arranging and resampling and taking sounds apart and putting them together again. In the end I had written around 10 tracks for this, had picked 6, and then decided on 4.
Can you share details about your recent project with Method India? What was the installation about, and why did you choose Method as the venue?
Revant - Growing Pains was an amalgamation of topics I had been exploring as an artist for a long time, but through a personal lens, exploring social hierarchies and institutions from a personal lens, Looking at the role they play in my life and how that connects to my personal views of the outside world. I had been following Method for a few years and had been wanting to do something with them for a while since they are one of the only galleries pushing the type of work I do effectively in India right now. it just happened to work out, very right place right time type of scenario.
What are your future plans as an artist? What can we expect to see from you next?
Revant - I have been working on my debut album, a project I started in 2021. Kind of a meeting point for everything I have been working on since after 2020. Currently taking things one step at a time considering how overwhelming everything gets. But ideally I would like a future where all my work comes in together. Without any labels for music, art, photos or anything. A huge part of me changing my name came from me wanting to move together towards that.
Revant
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