On Threads, the new album by Indian-origin music producers Baalti and Lapgan, yesteryear disco queen Runa Laila can be heard entreating a jyotishi (fortune teller) to reveal details about her love life. The beseechment, in Bengali, sampled alongside folk beats, is followed by a voice memo of Gaurav Nagpal—who goes by Lapgan—actually speaking with a jyotishi in person.

The New York-based duo of Mihir Chauhan and Jaiveer Singh , who make music as Baalti, say it’s one of the most fun samples on their new record. It’s a small example of their unique source material—Carnatic beats, club sounds, chopped Indian classical scatting. In the 1970s, rumours swirled that the ‘Skylab’ satellite would crash in the Kashmir valley. It never did crash, but became a legendary anecdote. In Baalti & Lapgan’s music video for Lime Tikka, a village girl named “Satellite” is seen trying to build a sophisticated time-travelling machine.

Baalti & Lapgan aren’t the only ones dilating through music to earlier timelines. In Los Angeles, composer Sanaya Ardeshir has just put out her first album under her legal name. For over a decade, Ardeshir produced synth-driven electronica using the moniker Sandunes, from her home base in Mumbai. Post-covid, having moved to LA and being outside the forcefield of her immediate Parsi family and community, she had a substantial shift in perspective on her identity and belonging. On Hand of Thought, which released earlier this summer, Ardeshir looks to her ancestors for whom being Parsi was a massive part of their identity and everyday life. Against the context of the dwindling numbers of the Zoroastrian community, Ardeshir centers a specific grief and uncertainty through the creative process.

Most of the women in Ardeshir’s family played the piano, as the artist uses the instrument as a lens to view and examine their lived experiences. The anthemic opening of the album with the titular track soon meanders into piano motifs and discordant sounds. On Barefoot Steps, Ardeshir creates pensive notes that could almost soundtrack a neo-noir film, with her signature drum rhythm.

All three artists—Ardeshir, Lapgan and Baalti—have been performing their new material at venues in the West. While the nadaswaram reed on Lime Tikka always ends up perking up ears a bit more, neither Baalti or Lapgan ever expected devotional Carnatic music or Rajasthani folk to get people moving in the club.

Threads is intended to be a gapless listen with the first and last track looping back to each other in an endless flat circle of beats. “The record channels our love for sounds from the past of India and Pakistan. We wanted the listening experience to be like traveling through time,” says Lapgan, further describing it as “jamming with sonic ancestors”.

In 2016, Ardeshir perceived her literal hands being taken over by a larger force or an “ancestral consciousness.” She was, at the time, a part of the Goethe Institute x Border Movement residency. While living in Berlin, she practiced minimal piano motifs endlessly on the room’s upright piano and read Kosho Uchiyama’s seminal book on Zen Buddhism, Opening the Hand of Thought. Straddling the worlds of meditation and composition, she developed a new language with the piano.

Hand of Thought closes with poignant keying on Nora’s House. Choo-choo sounds, tabla that resembles locomotive momentum and meandering piano; distinctly create a surrealistic experience of train travel on Deccan Queen—an ode to an iconic train that has run between Mumbai and Pune for almost a century. With ancestral homes in both cities, Ardeshir was looking for a way to express moving tracks.

For Baalti & Lapgan, ancestry comes with a struggle of the big identity question—something that diaspora Indians can spend an entire lifetime figuring. On Naaz, an old film sample is juxtaposed against a ‘90s A.R. Rahman style beat. The sampled strings section creates a nostalgia for today’s dancefloor. Threads end on a trippy note, all while leaning into the future, with one foot in the subcontinent’s past.

Earlier, externalising aspects of her identity used to feel like tokenism for Ardeshir. “Seeing how the music industry does so much of that for you. I just wanted to avoid centering my ethnicity or gender and by extension my heritage. With Hand Of Thought, it's like a realisation settled inside of me that has to do with exploring ‘where you come from’ as a means to truly move forward,” says Ardeshir.

In order to protect the creative process and also hold sacred her matrilineal heritage, Ardeshir has co-founded Karigar Records (on which this album has been released) with producer and musician Krishna Jhaveri. It is an ode to Ardeshir’s great aunt or grandmother’s elder sister, who was the founder of an organisation for the welfare of Indian traditional artisans and handicraftsmen, called Paramparik Karigar.

Off Threads, Baalti and Lapgan feel most connected to closing track Jab Se. It blends the sounds they grew up hearing on the radio along with early electronic music influences. It’s the song that they’ve always wanted to make but were only able to crystallise now. “It really does feel like the universe put it there for us,” they add.

As Indian-origin artists in the US, they have some cautionary advice. “Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel true to you or feels performative! If it feels forced, people can tell,” says Baalti, adding that people are a lot more intuitive than you’d think. While interpreting cultural heritage and South Asian sounds may be completely unique and personal to everyone—Ardeshir, Baalti and Lapgan seem to have found their distinctive sonic devices to do the same with their latest albums.

Arunima Joshua is a Mumbai-based journalist.

On Threads, the new album by Indian-origin music producers Baalti and Lapgan, yesteryear disco queen Runa Laila can be heard entreating a jyotishi (fortune teller) to reveal details about her love life. The beseechment, in Bengali, sampled alongside folk beats, is followed by a voice memo of Gaurav Nagpal—who goes by Lapgan—actually speaking with a jyotishi in person.

The New York-based duo of Mihir Chauhan and Jaiveer Singh , who make music as Baalti, say it’s one of the most fun samples on their new record. It’s a small example of their unique source material—Carnatic beats, club sounds, chopped Indian classical scatting. In the 1970s, rumours swirled that the ‘Skylab’ satellite would crash in the Kashmir valley. It never did crash, but became a legendary anecdote. In Baalti & Lapgan’s music video for Lime Tikka, a village girl named “Satellite” is seen trying to build a sophisticated time-travelling machine.

Baalti & Lapgan aren’t the only ones dilating through music to earlier timelines. In Los Angeles, composer Sanaya Ardeshir has just put out her first album under her legal name. For over a decade, Ardeshir produced synth-driven electronica using the moniker Sandunes, from her home base in Mumbai. Post-covid, having moved to LA and being outside the forcefield of her immediate Parsi family and community, she had a substantial shift in perspective on her identity and belonging. On Hand of Thought, which released earlier this summer, Ardeshir looks to her ancestors for whom being Parsi was a massive part of their identity and everyday life. Against the context of the dwindling numbers of the Zoroastrian community, Ardeshir centers a specific grief and uncertainty through the creative process.

Most of the women in Ardeshir’s family played the piano, as the artist uses the instrument as a lens to view and examine their lived experiences. The anthemic opening of the album with the titular track soon meanders into piano motifs and discordant sounds. On Barefoot Steps, Ardeshir creates pensive notes that could almost soundtrack a neo-noir film, with her signature drum rhythm.

All three artists—Ardeshir, Lapgan and Baalti—have been performing their new material at venues in the West. While the nadaswaram reed on Lime Tikka always ends up perking up ears a bit more, neither Baalti or Lapgan ever expected devotional Carnatic music or Rajasthani folk to get people moving in the club.

Threads is intended to be a gapless listen with the first and last track looping back to each other in an endless flat circle of beats. “The record channels our love for sounds from the past of India and Pakistan. We wanted the listening experience to be like traveling through time,” says Lapgan, further describing it as “jamming with sonic ancestors”.

In 2016, Ardeshir perceived her literal hands being taken over by a larger force or an “ancestral consciousness.” She was, at the time, a part of the Goethe Institute x Border Movement residency. While living in Berlin, she practiced minimal piano motifs endlessly on the room’s upright piano and read Kosho Uchiyama’s seminal book on Zen Buddhism, Opening the Hand of Thought. Straddling the worlds of meditation and composition, she developed a new language with the piano.

Hand of Thought closes with poignant keying on Nora’s House. Choo-choo sounds, tabla that resembles locomotive momentum and meandering piano; distinctly create a surrealistic experience of train travel on Deccan Queen—an ode to an iconic train that has run between Mumbai and Pune for almost a century. With ancestral homes in both cities, Ardeshir was looking for a way to express moving tracks.

For Baalti & Lapgan, ancestry comes with a struggle of the big identity question—something that diaspora Indians can spend an entire lifetime figuring. On Naaz, an old film sample is juxtaposed against a ‘90s A.R. Rahman style beat. The sampled strings section creates a nostalgia for today’s dancefloor. Threads end on a trippy note, all while leaning into the future, with one foot in the subcontinent’s past.

Earlier, externalising aspects of her identity used to feel like tokenism for Ardeshir. “Seeing how the music industry does so much of that for you. I just wanted to avoid centering my ethnicity or gender and by extension my heritage. With Hand Of Thought, it's like a realisation settled inside of me that has to do with exploring ‘where you come from’ as a means to truly move forward,” says Ardeshir.

In order to protect the creative process and also hold sacred her matrilineal heritage, Ardeshir has co-founded Karigar Records (on which this album has been released) with producer and musician Krishna Jhaveri. It is an ode to Ardeshir’s great aunt or grandmother’s elder sister, who was the founder of an organisation for the welfare of Indian traditional artisans and handicraftsmen, called Paramparik Karigar.

Off Threads, Baalti and Lapgan feel most connected to closing track Jab Se. It blends the sounds they grew up hearing on the radio along with early electronic music influences. It’s the song that they’ve always wanted to make but were only able to crystallise now. “It really does feel like the universe put it there for us,” they add.

As Indian-origin artists in the US, they have some cautionary advice. “Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel true to you or feels performative! If it feels forced, people can tell,” says Baalti, adding that people are a lot more intuitive than you’d think. While interpreting cultural heritage and South Asian sounds may be completely unique and personal to everyone—Ardeshir, Baalti and Lapgan seem to have found their distinctive sonic devices to do the same with their latest albums.

Arunima Joshua is a Mumbai-based journalist.