Nikhil , you ’ re a music producer yourself . How do you stay up to date with the current trends in music ? How does it influence your role at Vh1 Supersonic ?
Nikhil : One of the good things that I like to do is listen to a lot of radio . While listening to the radio , I hear a lot of new music . And I don ’ t just mean the radio in the city that I live in but also online radio . I get to listen to a lot of artists , I get to spot trends over time because it ’ s not like I listen to radio for a week and make a decision based on what I hear from that week . I listen to the radio a lot .
Secondly , I also DJ , professionally . So , I get to have conversations . Not just play out the music that I play but I also have conversations with DJs in the different clubs that I go to , to understand what ’ s being played on the nights that I ’ m not there . What gets played on Thursday night , Friday night , Saturday night , and Sunday night at a club . So based on all of this information , you get to see what trends are emerging and what ’ s being played across venues all across India . You get a sense of what the map of music in the country is like . Based on that , we evaluate what our decisions are going to be , or how our decisions are going to be taken when we get down to choosing the artists we are going to book for Supersonic . Gaurav and I both love data , different kinds of data , it is like gold to us . Even just having a conversation with a 20-yearold saying “ hey what are you listening to ” will do the trick .
Tell us more about the 10,000 Lions sound system stage .
Nikhil : It ’ s everyone ’ s favourite stage . Whether you ’ re into Prateek Kuhad or Diplo or Illenium or DIVINE , it ’ s one of those stages that when you ’ re walking by , you ’ re like “ oh ! This is a nice , fun vibe ,” and then you ’ ll dance there for 5-10 minutes and then you carry on to wherever you ’ re headed off to . So , it ’ s one of those stages wherever everybody goes and experiences it at some point of time in the festival . If you ask festival fans what their top two stages are at VH1 Supersonic , most of them will definitely include 10,000 Lions in their top two stages regardless of their favourite genre in music .
Nikhil , what was your experience of performing at Supersonic ? Considering you ’ re one of the key organisers , how was it performing at your own festival ?
Nikhil : This is actually the first time I played a set at Vh1 Supersonic . I ’ m normally Mister Paranoid # 1 . I have my walkie – talkie attached and switch between channels to see what ’ s happening at the bar management channel , what ’ s happening at the security channel , what ’ s happening at the artist management channel . So , I ’ m usually very paranoid about that and I ’ ve never given myself a set to play at the music festival but this time , the artist team and I felt that maybe it wouldn ’ t be such a bad idea for me to have a back-to-back set with one of my closest friend BrownCoat . It went on really well ! For me it was in a way liberating to take my walkie-talkie and my headset off for an hour and a half and just play music and enjoy myself but then by the time we got to the end of that 90 minutes , I was back to being Mister Paranoid # 1 . It was an experience in many different ways and I quite enjoyed it .
You had a new concept Pregaming , motivating the SuperFam to come in a bit early . Could you elaborate on that ? What was the whole idea behind that ?
Gaurav : We have had the pregaming or happy hours for all these years at the festival . This year we just curated it better and we spoke about it a lot more . This year , we tied up with Impresario and they were doing a spread of food and beverages . They had brought all the Impressario friends and brands into the festival . They had done some amazing cocktails , food pairings ,
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