Electro-organic band from Mumbai give second remarkable performance in a row

Shortly after performing in Dubai, their first gig outside of India, electro-organic band Nicholson, from Mumbai, travelled to England to appear at the renowned Great Escape festival in Brighton, where we talked to the band's co-founder and singer.

Mumbai-based musician Sohrab Nicholson, who is working on his band’s first album. Courtesy Nicholson

Sohrab Nicholson is understandably nervous. Having travelled all the way from Mumbai, Nicholson and his eponymous band are about to perform at The Great Escape in Brighton, Britain’s world-­renowned music festival. It’s only their second gig outside India, and it’s a big deal.

Their first foreign show took place in early May, in Dubai, “a lovely event called Lemon Jam”, says the singer. “Lots of people, some school friends who live there, came along – a fun gig.”

But the British show, which is merely a week later, is a different proposition. His quartet find themselves in a dark basement, on a horribly rainy day, with a worryingly sparse audience. Things are not looking great.

Thankfully, that changes rapidly. Forty-five minutes of remarkable music later, the band bound offstage to a rapturous ovation from a now hefty crowd. After that, several members join The National in a nearby cafe. Their leader is a lot more relaxed now.

“I have crippling stage fright,” says Nicholson, a self-confessed “neurotic human being”, despite his cool onstage demeanour. “Now, I feel really good.”

And understandably so. Formed in 2013, Nicholson are blazing a trail for innovative indie music from India, a small but “pretty amazing” scene. They have a unique sound – or sounds, really, because their live set could almost be a well-made mixtape, switching from experimental electronica to emotional ballads.

“That’s because we all listen to completely different music,” says Nicholson, nodding across the table at his main collaborator, the producer and drummer Rohan Ramanna. “Rohan is very experimental. I’m quite pop.”

Their diverse musical approaches were largely developed overseas. Nicholson studied jazz piano in Canada, while Ramanna blossomed in Singapore, “because the music education in India was non-existent – just classical”. Returning to Mumbai, Ramanna resolved to make a difference by opening a studio, Cotton Press, that actively encourages alternative musicians.

When Nicholson also returned, via London, he took along a batch of songs. The result was an unexpectedly ambitious sonic journey – “sound sculptures” is one frequent description that is applied to their work together.

“We use a lot of software that visually represents something – we can take a photo and represent what it would sound like in audio,” Ramanna explains.

“I try to write with colour in mind,” Nicholson adds. “I don’t know if that makes any sense, but when I hear a sound, I see a colour in my head.”

A debut album is in production, which they hope will be released this year. On stage, they experiment with two additional members, Stuart DaCosta and Jehangir ‘JJ’ Jehangir, who also offer tech wizardry. JJ wields a guitar and laptop, while Da­Costa mainly contributes “live vocal manipulation”, says Nicholson. The combination didn’t immediately gel.

“Our first show, there were a lot of mess-ups – a technical disaster,” says Nicholson. Ramanna adds: “My job is to streamline the set so much that nothing can go wrong. We’ve come a long way.”

However, touring shows do necessitate compromise. Their live Moog synthesiser is no more, and even DaCosta and JJ are occasionally sacrificed – the Dubai gig, for instance, featured just the core duo. The whole band did, however, fly over for the Great Escape gig, and it is not their only British performance. Last night, they performed at London’s Southbank Centre, as part of the Alchemy festival. Such illustrious invitations have impressed their most important critic.

“My mum is thrilled,” says Nicholson. “I always got so angry with her as a kid because she always wanted me to play the piano for her friends. But she’d say: ‘One day you’ll realise why.’”

It’s true – mother really does ­always know best.