Gizmobox : When did you start producing music – and what or who were your early passions and influences?
Sherrin : I’ve been producing music professionally for the past 10 years now. My early influences in life were the classic rock musicians and then I moved onto more organic electronic producers. Meanwhile music from our country in terms of semi-classical & Bollywood along with the international greats have been instrumental & omnipresent in shaping my tastes. Therefore and in no particular order, the following are my gods in music. Shankar Mahadevan, Sukhwinder singh, Beardyman, Opiuo, Koan sound, Phace & Misanthrop, Tim Exile, DJ Vespers, Erothyme, Modestep, Noisia, Seven Lions, Kill the noise, Porter Robinson, Skrillex, BT, Squarepusher, Nitin Sawhney, Shpongle, Amon Tobin, Tom Cosm, Seal, U2, Deep Purple, The Doors, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Vishal Dadlani, The Chemical brothers, The Prodigy, Clinton Cerejo, A.R. Rahman, L Shankar, Illayaraja.
Gizmobox : What do you personally consider to be the incisive moments in your artistic career?
Sherrin : One of the most incisive moments in my career was when I decided to go solo. As a band of boys we had professionals do everything for us in terms of writing, composing, arranging, recordings, productions, mixes, masters, music videos, preproduction, production, direction, post production, colour correction, album art, inlay design, marketing, aggregation, music labels, television airplay, radio, print ads etc. When I went solo, I had to do all these and a lot more on my own forcing me to learn the business and production aspect of the music world as well. One of the biggest game changers here was to learn music production which I beleive still is a never ending sea & the ability to direct & produce quality music videos thanks to a forced situation of filling in the director’s shoes during the shoot of Madhuram Malayalam has qualified me to do both these jobs well which are cruicial to being an artist today whether you are Youtuber or a album selling artiste.
Gizmobox : What are currently your main challenges as a musician in India?
Sherrin : One of the main challenges of being a musician in India is that the number of jobs are few & the people servicing them are many. Abroad a musician has the time & bandwidth to think and do a very good job while being content on the monies for producing his art as the demand to deliver is never instant and there is not much of a need to strive & get more jobs as the competition isn’t that heavy. Here the best of the best have to keep releasing new material or keep doing jobs just to keep relevant. There are many reasons for this, namely population, advancement in technology creating overnight bedroom producers on tutorial videos, mediocrity & lack of royalty systems in place. I met Prasoon Joshi on a flight once who told me & I quote “In India if one has to survive as an artist then one has to churn!”
Gizmobox : How do you feel the Digital Streaming, Social media has impacted the music business?
Sherrin : I believe streaming is the future as the fact that one can display an environment whether it’s recorded music, live events or any other personal activity & engage audiences with their chats, participation & comments remotely, all through the convenience of your phone has tickled the fancy of the entire world & validated a sense of being in the now more than ever. Never before has it been done so easily as it has been in the last 5 years, given that everything is now on demand, when you want as you want it.
The con to this is that there are too many players now and billion hours of content online, which makes it very easy for yours to get lost in the noise.
Social media is an ever evolving platform with it’s rules, best practices and alogorithms being changed and written everyday to suit consumerism optimised for the platform hosting it and right now I believe this double edged sword called Social media namely Facebook & Instagram is as much instrumental in making artists over night as well as destroying legacy ones who are not able to cope with the break neck speed required to stay afloat today. Also holistically the opportunities to enjoy a fruitful long innings as an artist is quite in question here as one can imagine writing a tune, becoming an overnight sensation & not being able to ever recreate that magic cos there’s just so much content now. This can drive artists to anxiety, depression & question their existence as one hit wonders making them even suicidal perhaps. Ganganm style from Psy is such an example or locally our very own Honey Singh.
Gizmobox : How would you like to describe your style of music?
Sherrin : A Volcano made love to a Tornado & out came poetic lightning & thunder babies!
Gizmobox : Your dream gig ?
Sherrin : My dream gig right now would be to grow & expand “The Cirucit” into a legacy platform with all my songs exploding high on content, viewership, engagement, brand placements, partnerships etc, & it becoming a much sought after platform for Indie talent in our country. I want to become a force to reckon with in the music world, have my content shared & aggregated & partnered by the best in the world, enjoy the respect of every musician in our country & the fruits of my labour well into my old age. Last but not least leave a digital legacy for my son to take over.7. Your most useful gadget that’s not a smartphone or laptop? – Key smart pro. A compact key organizer that lets you bunch a set of keys together very neatly like a swiss knife avoiding the jingle jangle & bulkiness of traditional key rings. Toss in a pendrive, some basic tools and it’s a winner.
Gizmobox : Favorite apps
Sherrin : Netflix, iTanpura, Voice Memos, TouchOsc, FFT, Amazon, GoPro, iPassword, Peak, Shazam
Gizmobox : Message for our readers?
Sherrin : Be original, don’t be mediocre & keep the content value very high!
