Desi Electronica's New Leader

Ritviz is not your average electronic artiste. The 23-year-old is a classically-trained singer who recently had his own festival, opened up for Katy Perry during her recent Mumbai show, and is on the path to take his desi sound beyond Indian borders

- Rajeev Mathew

During my extremely embarrassing EDM phase in 2014, I came across Nucleya’s Laung Gawacha. The song had me hooked on from the minute I hit play. For the first time, I heard electronic beats with Indian melodies flowing perfectly over them with a drop that didn’t disappoint. That marked the era of Nucleya along with the birth and rise of desi electronic music in India. Today, desi electronica is not defined by the name that started it but by the name that rules the genre right now — Ritviz.

I’m right on time for my interview with Ritviz. I enter a beautiful AirBnB in Mumbai’s Bandra area. It overlooks the sea, but we’re not close enough to hear the waves or get your wooden furniture corroded. This is just one of the many pads Ritviz will use to work on his music, based on his mood and schedule. He usually sticks to producing in his room but he was going to be using the apartment to record some vocals and polish off some tracks. I make myself comfortable on a weirdly-shaped yet surprisingly comfortable chair. Ritviz comes out of the washroom in his Gucci flip-flops after freshening himself up, and apologizes for keeping us waiting. He’s slightly groggy, the shower helped, but not as much as an eight-hour nap would. He tells me he was awake till five in the morning working on his album, DEV, that’s set to come out this year. Funnily enough, he was doing the exact same thing in 2014. Just replace the luxurious AirBnB and Gucci flip flops for a room in his parent’s house. But the sleepless nights producing music is what’s still in common.