With loopy, low-tempo beats and slow electronica (sample: his eight-minute long single ‘Irradon’), producer and guitarist Suryakant Sawhney creates Hindi glitch hop you’re happy to sway to. Lifafa is Sawhney’s solo project, but you might know the 29-year-old better as the vocalist from Peter Cat Recording Co. With Lifafa, he steers away from the band’s alt-rock anthems, and leans towards relatable, retro Bollywood-inspired lyrics and kitschy overlay. We caught up with artist before he packed his bags for a UK tour:
On learning to write:
“I write without any rules. I once thought my vocabulary wasn’t good enough, but it seems the best songs have the simplest words. Deciding what really constitutes good Hindi songwriting is an interesting question; realising which words work better in a song is also something that needs to come intuitively, and I’m slowly working on that.”
On working in unusual places:
“Melodies often come to me while I’m walking around inebriated somewhere, and I write a lot while I’m driving my girlfriend’s car. Cars are incredibly private places and have replaced my previous favourite: the bathroom.”
On his favourite music memory:
“I was playing at a festival in Porto (Portugal) called Serralves em Festa in 2014. I was playing after the Sun Ra Arkestra and for some reason the crowd of 5,000 odd people went nuts during my show. Maybe their drugs peaked at the same time? Who knows! People started crying, and a couple came on stage during the performance and announced that they’d decided to get married during a song. It was a strange show.”
Lifafa will perform at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton on May 19 and the Southbank Centre on May 29
