To a new rocking beat

From the slums of Mumbai to the streets of London and Denmark, Sanaya Ardeshir better known as Sandunes is turning unconventional sounds into music. The artist has collaborated with Red Bull Media House for her recently launched global three-part series Searching For Sound that showcases her journey through Mumbai where she created and recorded sounds in several spaces using traditional recording techniques.

“It was a project that came my way when I was exploring this theme of creating music from found sounds. It is a great structure to impose on the creative process of digital composition — where there are usually endless choices one can make,” says Sanaya. The basic inspiration behind Sanaya’s tracks is her surroundings.  “I adhere only to sounds and samples from the environment around me and utilize my software to mould and bend those into the parts of the song,” she adds.  

 For Searching for Sound, Sanaya has collaborated with three young female musicians Aarifah Rebello, Nush Lewis and Malabika Brahma to find unique sounds from the outskirts of the city. “We recorded several Baul folk tunes at the reverberant Kanheri caves in Borivali. It was a great experience and an incredible opportunity to work with all the three artists on the same piece of music,” says the artist who travelled across Mumbai to a number of locations - some iconic, some historical and some quite personal.

Talking about the process of hunting for sounds to collating them with final reverberations, Sanaya says, “It takes a lot of scouting to find areas and localities that appeal to the cultural, educational, natural and historical significance of the city. In the process of collecting sounds, I didn’t exclude anything though only about 50% of what I recorded made it to the final piece of music.” She also feels that Mumbai has an added advantage of being a noisy city. “By the end of the recording. I have enough material for a whole album that I have gathered from this incredibly noisy city,” gushes Sanaya.

An alumnus of Point Blank Music College in London, Sanaya came to the city in 2012 and made her debut a year later with Ever Bridge in 2013 along with eminent musicians such as Uday Benegal and Siddarth Basrur. The artist has been playing at clubs and festivals across the world and feels that her roller coaster music journey has been a source of self-development. “It has been an incredibly fruitful and fulfilling journey. At times, it has also been extremely challenging, financially burdensome, and anxiety-inducing, but undoubtedly, working in music and sticking to it has been the biggest source of my personal growth and happiness,” she says.

Using this unconventional style of producing music may seem daunting but for the 29-year-old, her definition for success stands undemanding. “It really depends how you define the triumph. I suppose, in order for music-making to be sustainable as an artist in 2018, one has to be extremely versatile, adaptable and have a high level of willingness to keep learning new skills and continue to put oneself out there,” she believes. The electronic music producer also plans to take her work abroad this year. “I will be touring for shows in Europe and London this year,” she confirms.