MUMBAI: Electronica producer Dualist Inquiry aka Sahej Bakshi released a new track, Mayday today, marking the end of an 18-month long production hiatus.

Released on his own label, Dualism Records, Mayday is a confident step into new sonic territory for the Delhi-based producer. Dualist Inquiry’s guitar-inflected, dancefloor-friendly productions placed him at front and centre at the new wave of Indian electronica, but the producer’s latest release shows just how reluctant he is to be subjected to a classification of that nature. His new venture sounds, unlike anything he has ever released before.

Mayday, perhaps tellingly, begins with a sample of a harried pilot on the radio who is shouting ‘I don’t know where I am! Mayday, mayday, mayday,’ who eventually aborts the mission. The production, layered in sounds and textures, sees Sahej Bakshi leave his pop-oriented, guitar-driven sound behind for one that’s high on emotion and synths, and far more experimental than anything he has done.

Dualist Inquiry said, “After my last release in 2016, I took a step back and decided to not write any new music until I felt an irrepressible urge, a need to express something.”

He further added, “That something ended up being this feeling of falling freely, a mindset that has dominated a few recent phases of my personal journey. As the months went by, I felt my feet firmly on the ground again, and realized that I needed to write a song to capture that specific feeling before it fades into my past.” That's how Mayday emerged after an 18-month hiatus. 

The artwork for the release has been done by Sijya Gupta and features a man freefalling from space, reflective of Sahej’s frame of mind.

The new track will be available on Dualist Inquiry channels on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, YouTube as well as leading music stores like Apple Music, Saavn, Amazon Music and Spotify, today.

Dualist Inquiry will also release another track, Fever Dream on 4 May.

Meanwhile, the past 18 months saw Sahej diversify his interests into videography and filmmaking, and also don the hat of a music entrepreneur. He enrolled in a filmmaking course in Prague, and has, in fact, directed the videos for his soon-to-be-released tracks ‘Mayday’ and ‘Fever Dream’. He has also spent the last few months setting up Boxout.fm – an online community radio that completed a year in April 2018 – as a co-founder along with DJ MoCity.