BAALTI IS MAKING NOISE FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS

The DJ producer duo flips South Asia's hidden sounds into the hardest, sickest dance floor bangers

- SHAMANI JOSHI

You can't trace the beginning of Baalti—the bass experimenters duo made up of Jaiveer Singh and Mihir Chauhan—back to a single big bang moment. But somewhere between watching a group of Americans co-opt yoga into a “trance dance” meditation session, trading sample flips of old vinyl records at a head-spinning pace, and going down research rabbit holes on hidden music subcultures, the two college mates stumbled upon their signature sound together.

The pair has cultivated a bass-laden, groove-driven, rhythmically rich musical sensibility that reimagines familiar found sounds from the South Asian subcontinent into abstract new forms. Their debut EP, Baalti, pays homage to Bengali disco, Hindustani classical, and Gujarati folk music, turning classics by Ustad Zakir Hussain and Rupa Biswas into lo-fi house renditions like “Ustad” and “Kolkata ‘78.” Meanwhile, their sophomore EP, Better Together, leans further into these South Asian flavors with an infectious energy meant to be unleashed on the dance floor. With their latest offering, Mela, they cannonball into the cavernous chaos of West Bengal’s underground sound system clashes, splicing beats that feel as feral and unrelenting as the towering speaker stacks battling for sonic supremacy. And their recently dropped remix of “Tere Bina” attempts to bring legendary composer A.R. Rahman’s lyrical depth into Baalti’s experimental universe.